The one-pager we give every client. Four models, one effort dial, three ways to load your business in. Save it, share it, argue with it.
Near-instant and the cheapest. Use it when the task is mechanical and volume is high.
The everyday default. Best smarts-per-dollar for 80% of real work.
Deep work on big material. Reads entire codebases and contract stacks (1M-token context).
The newest flagship family. Hardest reasoning, longest agent runs, best taste.
Every model also has a thinking / effort setting: how long it reasons before answering. Low = instant answer. High = it works the problem first. This changes results more than most model swaps.
| Effort | When | Feels like |
|---|---|---|
| low | Lookups, rewrites, formatting, anything you'll check yourself | A fast colleague answering from memory |
| medium/high | Debugging, planning, maths, anything multi-step | Someone taking a walk to think it through first |
| max | The genuinely hard stuff — let it grind | A specialist locking the door for an afternoon |
Where it lives: claude.ai → model picker ▾ → Extended thinking Claude Code → type /model → pick model + effort
In claude.ai: sidebar → Projects → new. Upload your website copy, your 2–3 best proposals, 5 real customer emails. Then set instructions: "Write like these examples. This is our tone, our offer, our prices." Every chat in the project now knows your business.
Look for:
📁 Projects+ Add to project knowledge⚙ Set custom instructionsSettings → Connectors. Plug in Gmail, Drive, Calendar (and any MCP tool your systems expose). Now it answers from your actual emails and files: "Summarise every open quote from this month's email."
Look for:
🔌 Connectors Connected: Gmail🔍 Search & tools (in the chat box)The 3-example rule: paste two or three gold-standard outputs before you ask for a new one. Models copy patterns far better than they follow adjectives. "Professional but friendly" loses to three real examples, every time.
| The task | Model | Effort | Plus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Label / sort / extract from 1,000 things | Haiku 4.5 | low | Clear format example |
| Reply to a customer email | Sonnet 5 | low | 3 past replies as examples |
| Write a proposal or quote | Opus 4.8 | medium | Project with your winners loaded |
| Debug code / fix a spreadsheet formula | Sonnet 5 → Opus 4.8 | high | Paste the error, not a description |
| Read a 100-page contract / whole codebase | Opus 4.8 | medium | 1M context — give it everything |
| Pricing, strategy, "what should we do?" | Fable 5 | max | Real numbers in, always |
| An agent that works for hours unattended | Fable 5 / Opus 4.8 | high | Connectors + tight instructions |
| Meeting → summary → action list | Haiku 4.5 | low | Your action-list template |