Anthropic Advisor Tool: Near-Opus Agent Performance at Lower Cost
Anthropic launched the Advisor Strategy on April 9, 2026 — a way to get near-Opus intelligence in your AI agents at a fraction of the cost. The idea is simple. Instead of running Opus on every request, you pair a cheaper model with Opus as an on-demand advisor. The cheap model does all the work. Opus only steps in when needed. How It Works You have two roles: Executor — Sonnet or Haiku. Runs every turn. Calls tools, reads results, makes decisions. Advisor — Opus. Runs on-demand only. Reviews the shared context and sends guidance when the executor is stuck. The executor and advisor share the same context: the system prompt, tool definitions, full conversation history, and all prior tool results. When the executor hits a hard decision, it calls the advisor tool. Opus reviews the full context and sends back a plan or correction. Then the executor continues. ...