Unclear It is not clear whether the server document is sent, so the defaults may still be the built-in ones for now.
What
Claude Code picks a default model for each model family alias (sonnet, opus and haiku). These defaults used to be fixed in each build. Now:
- The default for a family can come from a document. Such a default is marked
fromDocument, and it can carry adocumentTargetnaming a model ID this build does not know. - The
ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_*_MODELenvironment variables, such asANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL, keep priority over these defaults. - In two places that check
modelOverrides(the setting that maps model IDs to your provider's IDs), entries that have adocumentTargetare no longer suppressed by amodelOverridesentry. One place returns the tier, environment variable and value for model tiers set by environment variables; the other checks the environment variables of each model entry. - A new check lists candidate models that fail an availability check.
- On Bedrock and Vertex, startup now also runs
checkBedrockDocumentDefaultsorcheckVertexDocumentDefaultsin the time left. When a document-configured default is not available on the account, a startup notice says "Default model: ... not available on this account - not used as this session's default". - New helpers decide whether a model name configured for a third-party provider (Bedrock, Vertex or Mantle) is usable. They check per-provider and everywhere default pins, and fall back to an older model in the same family when
modelOverridescovers the newer one.
Why
In practice, which model an alias such as sonnet points to is no longer decided only by the installed build. On Bedrock and Vertex you are told when such a default is not available to your account instead of it being used anyway.
The entry above is what we published on the day. These lines were added later, as Anthropic's own pages caught up, and they sit beside the original rather than replacing it.
[What’s new in Claude Haiku 5.5](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/models/haiku-5-5/whats-new-haiku-5-5)models/haiku-5-5/overview see the edit
If you’re unsure which model to use, start with [Claude Opus 5.5](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/models/opus-5-5/overview) for most workloads. Use [Claude Fable 5.1](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/models/fable-5-1/overview) for d…intro see the edit
If your gateway serves Claude models under routing aliases, list each alias in `inferenceModels` and set `behavesAs` on its entry to the ID of the Claude model it routes to, such as `claude-sonnet-5`. For an alias without a model version, …third-party/claude-desktop/gateway see the edit
/claude-api migrate this project to claude-sonnet-5-5models/sonnet-5-5/migration-guide see the edit
/claude-api migrate this project to claude-haiku-5-5models/haiku-5-5/migration-guide see the edit
* Improved startup time for launches whose only arguments are options and their values, such as `claude --model opus`changelog see the edit
It is not clear whether the server document is sent, so the defaults may still be the built-in ones for now.
Anthropic's documentation has since written up opus, on Claude Code changelog.