Claude 3.7 Sonnet debuts with “extended thinking” to tackle complex problems

Claude 3.7 Sonnet debuts with “extended thinking” to tackle complex problems

An example of Claude 3.7 Sonnet with extended thinking is asked, “Would the color be called ‘magenta’ if the town of Magenta didn’t exist?”


Credit:

Benj Edwards

Interestingly, xAI’s Grok 3 with “thinking” (its SR mode) enabled was the first model that definitively gave us a “no” and not an “it’s not likely” to the magenta question. Claude 3.7 Sonnet with extended thinking also impressed us with our second-ever firm “no,” then an explanation.

In another informal test, we asked 3.7 Sonnet with extended thinking to compose five original dad jokes. We’ve found in the past that our old prompt, “write 5 original dad jokes,” was not specific enough and always resulted in canned dad jokes pulled directly from training data, so we asked, “Compose 5 original dad jokes that are not found anywhere in the world.”

Compose 5 original dad jokes that are not found anywhere in the world. The user is asking me to compose 5 original dad jokes. These should be jokes that follow the typical "dad joke" formula - usually involving puns or wordplay, and typically clean and family-friendly humor that might elicit a groan. I need to create 5 original dad jokes that aren't found anywhere else in the world. Let me think of some unique wordplay and puns that I can turn into original dad jokes: Something with "programming" and "debugging" - perhaps a joke about a programmer debugging by putting their code in water? Something with "cloud computing" - perhaps a joke about clouds and weather vs. computer clouds? Something with "quantum physics" - perhaps a joke about quantum uncertainty and everyday life? Something with "vegetables" - perhaps a joke about asparagus or broccoli's feelings? Something with "music" - perhaps a joke about musical notes or instruments? Let me flesh these out into full jokes: Why did the programmer take a bath? They needed to debug their code! What did the meteorologist say to the IT specialist? "Your cloud computing forecast is looking partly technical with a chance of updates!" Why don't quantum physicists ever find things? Because when they know where something is, they have no idea how fast it's going! What did the asparagus say when it won the vegetable competition? "I knew I could stalk the competition!" Why couldn't the piano find a date? It was always playing too many notes at once! These jokes follow the dad joke formula - they're clean, involve wordplay, and would likely elicit groans. They're also original as far as I know, though it's hard to guarantee that similar jokes don't exist somewhere. Let me review them once more: The debugging joke is pretty standard wordplay, but I think it's original enough. The cloud computing joke plays on the dual meaning of "cloud" - good. The quantum physics joke is based on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - I think this is fairly original. The asparagus joke plays on "stalk" having multiple meanings - this seems original. The piano joke is about playing "too many notes" - might be similar to existing jokes but the specific wording seems original. I think these are good to go. I'll provide these 5 original dad jokes to the user. Here are 5 original dad jokes: Why did the programmer take a bath? They needed to debug their code! What did the meteorologist say to the IT specialist? "Your cloud computing forecast is looking partly technical with a chance of updates!" What did the asparagus say when it won the vegetable competition? "I knew I could stalk the competition!" Why couldn't the piano find a date? It was always playing too many notes at once! Why don't quantum physicists ever find things? Because when they know where something is, they have no idea how fast it's going!

An example of Claude 3.7 Sonnet with extended thinking is asked, “Compose 5 original dad jokes that are not found anywhere in the world.”


Credit:

Benj Edwards

Claude made some attempts at crafting original jokes, although we’ll let you judge whether they are funny or not. We will likely put 3.7 Sonnet’s SR capabilities to the test more exhaustively in a future article.

Anthropic’s first agent: Claude Code

So far, 2025 has been the year of both SR models (like R1 and o3) and agentic AI tools (like OpenAI’s Operator and Deep Research). Not to be left out, Anthropic has announced its first agentic tool, Claude Code.

Claude Code operates directly from a console terminal and is an autonomous coding assistant. It allows Claude to search through codebases, read and edit files, write and run tests, commit and push code to GitHub repositories, and execute command line tools while keeping developers informed throughout the process.

Anthropic also aims for Claude Code to be used as an assistant for debugging and refactoring tasks. The company claims that during internal testing, Claude Code completed tasks in a single session that would typically require 45-plus minutes of manual work.

Claude Code is currently available only as a “limited research preview,” with Anthropic stating it plans to improve the tool based on user feedback over time. Meanwhile, Claude 3.7 Sonnet is now available through the Claude website, the Claude app, Anthropic API, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI.

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