AI / Claude Sonnet5 Interview questions

What is the difference between Claude Sonnet 5 and Claude Sonnet 4.6?

Claude Sonnet 5 is a drop-in upgrade for Sonnet 4.6, with three specific breaking API changes: adaptive thinking now runs by default on unconfigured requests, manual extended thinking (a fixed budget_tokens configuration) is rejected with an HTTP 400 error, and non-default sampling parameters (temperature, top_p, top_k) also return HTTP 400.

It also ships with a new tokenizer that produces roughly 30% more tokens for the same input text, an added xhigh effort level between high and max, and real-time cyber safeguards designed to detect and block dangerous cyber usage.

Feature-wise, everything else carries over unchanged - the 1M token context window, 128k max output, prompt caching, batch processing, the Files API, PDF support, vision, and the full tool set - except Priority Tier, which Sonnet 5 doesn't support.

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Which of these is a breaking API change on Sonnet 5 vs Sonnet 4.6? prompt caching was removed entirely

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the context window shrank to 200k

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non-default sampling parameters now return HTTP 400

✓ Correct! Well done.

Sonnet 5's new tokenizer produces, for the same text: roughly 30% more tokens

✓ Correct! Well done.

roughly 30% fewer tokens

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exactly the same token count

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More Related questions...

What is the difference between Claude Sonnet 5 and Claude Sonnet 4.6? How does Claude Sonnet 5 compare to Claude Opus 5 in capability and cost? Why does Claude Sonnet 5 run with thinking on by default? What is the difference between adaptive thinking and manual extended thinking? Why does Claude Sonnet 5 reject non-default sampling parameters? How does the effort parameter differ between Claude Sonnet 5 and Claude Sonnet 4.6? What is the difference between the xhigh and max effort levels? Why does Claude Sonnet 5's tokenizer change matter for migration? How does Claude Sonnet 5's context window differ from Claude Sonnet 4.6's in practice? When should you disable thinking on Claude Sonnet 5? What is the difference between disabling thinking on Sonnet 5 and on Opus 5? Why does max_tokens now behave differently on Claude Sonnet 5? How does Claude Sonnet 5's prompting guidance differ from Claude Sonnet 4.6's for verbosity? What happens when you set effort to low on a genuinely complex problem? When should you raise effort instead of prompting around shallow reasoning? How does Sonnet 5's agentic capability compare to Sonnet 3.5-3.7? Why is Claude Sonnet 5 described as narrowing the gap with Opus-class models? What is the difference between Claude Sonnet 5's cyber safeguards and its predecessor's? How does Claude Sonnet 5's alignment profile compare to Claude Sonnet 4.6's? When should you choose Claude Sonnet 5 over Claude Opus 5 for a coding task? What is the difference between Claude Sonnet 5's Priority Tier support and Claude Sonnet 4.6's? How does prompt caching behavior change when migrating to Claude Sonnet 5? Why should you re-run token counting before migrating to Claude Sonnet 5? What is the difference between migrating from Sonnet 4.6 versus from Sonnet 4.5 or earlier? How does Claude Sonnet 5 handle assistant message prefilling? When would you choose Claude Sonnet 5's xhigh effort over Claude Opus 5 entirely? What is the difference between Claude Sonnet 5's response-length calibration and a fixed verbosity default? How does Claude Sonnet 5's tool-use behavior differ from Claude Sonnet 4.6's? Why doesn't lowering effort guarantee that Claude Sonnet 5 skips thinking? What is the difference between Sonnet 5 and Opus 5 on long-horizon coding? Explain the execution flow of a Claude Sonnet 5 request that omits the thinking field? How can you optimize Claude Sonnet 5 costs given the new tokenizer? How do you troubleshoot a new HTTP 400 error after migrating to Sonnet 5? Explain the internal difference between Claude Sonnet 5's effort parameter and its adaptive thinking mechanism? Which is better for a high-volume coding pipeline: Sonnet 5 or Opus 5? How do you troubleshoot a Claude Sonnet 5 response truncated at max_tokens after migration? Explain the lifecycle of a migration from Claude Sonnet 4.6 to Claude Sonnet 5? How can you optimize Claude Sonnet 5's effort setting across a fleet of subagents? How do you troubleshoot degraded reasoning quality on Claude Sonnet 5 at low effort? Explain the execution flow of Claude Sonnet 5's cyber safeguards during a request? Which is more cost-efficient on simple tasks: Sonnet 5 max or Opus 5 low effort? How can you optimize prompts migrating from Sonnet 4.6 to Sonnet 5? Explain the internal working of Claude Sonnet 5's new tokenizer relative to Claude Sonnet 4.6's? How do you troubleshoot silent cost increases after migrating to Claude Sonnet 5? Explain the execution flow of a Sonnet 5 to Opus 5 escalation pipeline? How can you optimize Claude Sonnet 5's context window usage given the tokenizer change? Which is better for agentic multi-file refactoring: Sonnet 5 or Opus 5? How do you troubleshoot manual extended thinking left over from Sonnet 4.6? Explain the lifecycle of test-time compute scaling on Sonnet 5's effort levels? How can you optimize a rollout plan from Sonnet 4.6 to Sonnet 5?

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