Comment by jwr
2 days ago
I must be doing something wrong, because I can't get OpenCode to actually do anything useful, and not for lack of trying. Claude code gets me great results instantly, opencode (if I can't make it talk to a model, which isn't easy for Gemini) gets me… something, but it's nowhere near as useful as claude code. I don't know why there is so much difference, because theoretically there shouldn't be. Is it the prompt that Anthropic has been polishing in Claude code for so long?
> Is it the prompt that Anthropic has been polishing in Claude code for so long?
I think so.
The opencode TUI is very good, but whenever I try it again the results are subjectively worse than Claude Code. They have the disadvantage of supporting many more models in terms refining prompts / tool usage.
The Claude Code secret sauce seems to be running evals on real world performance and then tweaking prompts and the models themselves to make it work better.
There’s a ton of difference provided on top of the LLMs, especially the tools that allow LLMs to engineer their own context, validate generated code, test generate code, research code bases, planners, memory, skills, etc. The difference is night and day: like a brain in a closed jar versus a brain in a mobile human with eyes, ears, mouth and hands.
I only played with Claude Code briefly but my experience with OpenCode was amazing. My experience it works the best with Claude especially Sonnet models (I use it with Claude Sonnet 4.5 with my Copilot subscription).
Claude models in opencode use the Claude code system prompt, are you comparing Claude code to opencode with non anthropic models?
Yes.
That's apples to oranges then. You should use the same model between both harnesses if you want to evaluate the harnesses individually.