What 1M context on Opus 4.7 actually buys you (and what it doesn't)
Opus 4.7's 1M-token context window is genuinely useful for large cross-file refactors and multi-document synthesis — but most tasks don't need it, and paying for it blindly is expensive.
Extended thinking on Claude Code: where the extra tokens earn their keep
Extended thinking lets Claude reason silently before answering — useful for hard problems, wasteful on simple ones. Here's how to tell the difference and read the trace when things go sideways.