Stop guessing which Claude model to use
Haiku, Sonnet, Opus, Fable, and a setting called effort. Nobody explains any of it. This one page tells you which to pick for the work you actually do, and what to check when Claude hands you something you can’t use.
One page, next to your desk
No jargon, no forty-page manual. The whole thing fits on a page you can print and glance at whenever you open Claude.
The two settings, decoded
What the model does, what effort does, and why they are not the same knob. The one thing that makes the rest make sense.
All four models in plain words
Haiku, Sonnet, Opus, and Fable, each in one line, so you know which is your daily driver and which to save for the hard stuff.
The effort levels
Low to Max, what each one is for, and the setting almost everyone should just leave alone.
A pick-the-right-one table
Match what you are actually doing, writing an email, thinking through pricing, digging through a document, to the model and effort that fit.
Troubleshooting
What to do when Claude feels like it is getting dumber, makes something up, or skips a step. Usually it is not the model.
The one habit that fixes the most
Why a fresh chat beats a bigger model most of the time, and how to carry your work over without starting from scratch.
Most people never touch these settings
They leave Claude on whatever it came with and quietly decide it’s just okay. It usually isn’t. Once you know what that little menu is choosing between, you stop guessing and start getting work you can actually use.
Send me the cheat sheet