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Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

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Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not clear if the value actually exists here. Having spent a couple of weeks on Claude Code recently, I arrived to the conclusion that the net value for me from agentic AI is actually negative. I will give it another run in 6-8 months though.

For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. Since so many claim the opposite, I’m curious to what you do more specifically? I guess different roles/technologies benefit more from agents than others. I build full stack web applications in node/.net/react, more importantly (I think) is that I work on a small startup and manage 3 applications myself.

You have small applications following extremely common patterns and using common libraries. Models are good at regurgitating patterns they've seen many times, with fuzzy find/replace translations applied.

Try to build something like Kubernetes from the ground up and let us know how it goes. Or try writing a custom firmware for a device you just designed. Something like that.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#92
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flooding the context also means increasing the likelihood of the LLM confusing itself. Mainly because of the longer context. It derails along the way without a reset.

How do you know that?

https://github.com/adobe-research/NoLiMa

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not clear if the value actually exists here. Having spent a couple of weeks on Claude Code recently, I arrived to the conclusion that the net value for me from agentic AI is actually negative. I will give it another run in 6-8 months though.

For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. Since so many claim the opposite, I’m curious to what you do more specifically? I guess different roles/technologies benefit more from agents than others. I build full stack web applications in node/.net/react, more importantly (I think) is that I work on a small startup and manage 3 applications myself.

I think there are two broad cases where ai coding is beneficial:

1. You are a good coder but working on a new (to you) or building a new project, or working with a technology you are not familiar with. This is where AI is hugely beneficial. It does not only accelerate you, it lets you do things you could not otherwise.

2. You have spent a lot of time on engineering your context and learning what AI is good at, and using it very strategically where you know it will save time and not bother otherwise.

If you are a really good coder, really familiar with the project, and mostly changing its bits and pieces rather than building new functionality, AI won’t accelerate you much. Especially if you did not invest the time to make it work well.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#96
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really desperately need LLMs to maintain extremely effective context I actually built this. I'm still not ready to say "use the tool yet" but you can learn more about it at https://github.com/gitsense/chat . The demo link is not up yet as I need to finalize an admin tool but you should be able to follow the npm instructions to play around with. The basic idea is, you should be able to load your entire repo or rep…

Not clear how it gets around what is, ultimately, a context limit. I've been fiddling with some process too, would be good if you shared the how. The readme looks like yet another full fledged app.

Yes there is a context window limit, but I've found for most frontier models, you can generate very effective code if the context window is under 75,000 tokens provided the context is consistent. You have to think of everything from a probability point of view and the more logical the context, the greater the chances of better code.

For example, if the frontend doesn't need to know the backend code (other than the interface) not including the backend code to solve a frontend one to solve a specific problem can reduce context size and improve the chances of expected output. You just need to ensure you include the necessary interface documenation.

As for the full fledged app, I think you raised a good point and I should add a 'No lock in' section for why to use it. The app has a message tool that lets you pick and choose what messages to copy. Once you've copied the context (including any conversation messages that can help the LLM), you can use the context where ever you want.

My strategy with the app is to be the first place you goto to start a conversation before you even generate code, so my focus is helping you construct contexts (the smaller the better) to feed into LLMs.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not clear if the value actually exists here. Having spent a couple of weeks on Claude Code recently, I arrived to the conclusion that the net value for me from agentic AI is actually negative. I will give it another run in 6-8 months though.

For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. Since so many claim the opposite, I’m curious to what you do more specifically? I guess different roles/technologies benefit more from agents than others. I build full stack web applications in node/.net/react, more importantly (I think) is that I work on a small startup and manage 3 applications myself.

> I build full stack web applications in node/.net/react, more importantly (I think) is that I work on a small startup and manage 3 applications myself.

I think this is your answer. For example, React and JavaScript are extremely popular and aged. Are you using TypeScript and want to get most of the types or are you accepting everything that LLM gives as JavaScript? How interested you are about the code whether it is using "soon to be deprecated" functions or the most optimized loop/implementation? How about the project structure?

In other cases, the more precision you need, less effective LLM is.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#98
post #19

How does anyone send these models that much context without it tripping over itself? I can't get anywhere near that much before it starts losing track of instruction.

I think it's key to not give it contradictory instructions, which is an easy mistake to make if you forget where you started.

As an example, I know of an instance where the LLM claimed it had tried a test on its laptop. This obviously isn't true so the user argued with it. But they'd originally told it that it was a Senior Software Engineer so playing that role, saying you tested locally is fine.

As soon as you start arguing with those minor points you break the context; now it's both a Software Engineer and an LLM. Of course you get confused responses if you do that.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#99
Oh, well, ChatGPT is being left in the dust…

When done correctly, having one million tokens of context window is amazing for all sorts of tasks: understanding large codebases, summarizing books, finding information on many documents, etc.

Existing RAG solutions fill a void up to a point, but they lack the precision that large context windows offer.

I’m excited for this release and hope to see it soon on the UI as well.

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