Hands-On AI 7

Which AI model should you use, and how much effort should it put in? Using Claude as the example, Mikah Sargent explains its four model families, Haiku, Sonnet, Opus, and Fable, and its five effort levels, and shows that ChatGPT and Gemini have the same two dials. He explains what an AI model's "thinking" actually is and what changes when you switch models or turn up the effort. He compares an easy job on a light setup and a heavy one, tests a logic puzzle with one right answer at two effort levels, and explains why the top setting isn't automatically the best one. Then he shares a way to choose that works in any chatbot.

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• Transcripts: Hands-On AI 7 Transcript

Links

• Claude
• Claude Help Center, “Change the model, effort, and thinking settings”
• Claude Help Center, “How do usage and length limits work?”
• Claude Help Center, “Claude Fable models on your plan”
• Claude Help Center, “Claude Fable 5.2 launch offers”
• Claude Help Center, “Use incognito chats”
• Claude Docs, “Models overview”
• Claude Docs, “Choosing the right model”
• Claude Docs, “Effort”
• Claude Docs, “Thinking”
• Claude Docs, “Optimizing for cost and intelligence”
• OpenAI Help Center, “GPT-6 and other models in ChatGPT”
• OpenAI API docs, “Reasoning models”
• Gemini Apps Help, “About Gemini models”
• Google AI Studio docs, “Gemini thinking”
• Wei et al., “Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models”
• Kaplan et al., “Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models”
• Gema et al., “Inverse Scaling in Test-Time Compute”
• Simon Willison, “Release: llm-anthropic 0.31” (Fable pelicans at every effort level, Nov. 9, 2026)