Anthropic has introduced a new mode for its AI model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, named 'MAX', which is now available through the Cursor platform. This mode, also referred to as Claude 3.7 Thinking MAX, is designed to enhance the model's intelligence and performance, particularly for tasks requiring high levels of cognitive processing. The MAX mode, described as having 'Maximum Intelligence', is not a new model but rather an enhanced version of the existing Claude 3.7 Sonnet. It is tailored to provide maximum thinking, tool use, and context with a compute-intensive context picking and a 200k token window, according to Cursor's recent changelog. Users have reported significant improvements in task performance with the MAX mode, with some noting its effectiveness in coding tasks. However, access to this mode is limited to users who enable usage-based pricing, and it is not available for the base Pro plan. Concurrently, Anthropic experienced a prolonged downtime affecting both the Claude platform and its APIs due to an overload on their systems, leading to widespread user impact and frustration across various applications that rely on Claude's services.