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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

#421

Post by Wowfunhappy »

gdudeman wrote: post #83

A tip for those who both use Claude Code and are worried about token use (which you should be if you're stuffing 400k tokens into context even if you're on 20x Max): 1. Build context for the work you're doing. Put lots of your codebase into the context window. 2. Do work, but at each logical stopping point hit double escape to rewind to the context-filled checkpoint. You do not spend those tokens to rewind to that po…

I do this all the time and it sometimes works, but it's not a silver bullet. Sometimes Claude benefits from having the full conversation.

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

#422

Post by imiric »

brulard wrote: post #412
not_that_d wrote: post #304

My experience with the current tools so far: 1. It helps to get me going with new languages, frameworks, utilities or full green field stuff. After that I expend a lot of time parsing the code to understand what it wrote that I kind of "trust" it because it is too tedious but "it works". 2. When working with languages or frameworks that I know, I find it makes me unproductive, the amount of time I spend writing a goo…

For me it was like this for like a year (using Cline + Sonnet & Gemini) until Claude Code came out and until I learned how to keep context real clean. The key breakthrough was treating AI as an architect/implementer rather than a code generator. Most recently I ask first CC to create a design document for what we are going to do. He has instructions to look into the relevant parts of the code and docs to reference th…

This is a common workflow that most advanced users are familiar with.

Yet even following it to a T, and being really careful with how you manage context, the LLM will still hallucinate, generate non-working code, steer you into wrong directions and dead ends, and just waste your time in most scenarios. There's no magical workflow or workaround for avoiding this. These issues are inherent to the technology, and have been since its inception. The tools have certainly gotten more capable, and the ecosystem has matured greatly in the last couple of years, but these issues remain unsolved. The idea that people who experience them are not using the tools correctly is insulting.

I'm not saying that the current generation of this tech isn't useful. I've found it very useful for the same scenarios GP mentioned. But the above issues prevent me from relying on it for anything more sophisticated than that.

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

#423

Post by lpa22 »

One of the most helpful usages of CC so far is when I simply ask:

"Are there any bugs in the current diff"

It analyzes the changes very thoroughly, often finds very subtle bugs that would cost hours of time/deployments down the line, and points out a bunch of things to think through for correctness.

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

#424

Post by 9cb14c1ec0 »

benterix wrote: post #29
aliljet wrote: post #16

This is definitely one of my CORE problem as I use these tools for "professional software engineering." I really desperately need LLMs to maintain extremely effective context and it's not actually that interesting to see a new model that's marginally better than the next one (for my day-to-day). However. Price is king. Allowing me to flood the context window with my code base is great, but given that the price has su…

> 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.

The more I use Claude Code, the more aware I become of its limitations. On the whole, it's a useful tool, but the bigger the codebase the less useful. I've noticed a big difference on its performance on projects with 20k lines of code versus 100k. (Yes, I know. A 100k line project is still very small in the big picture)

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

#425

Post by Wowfunhappy »

PickledJesus wrote: post #181
novaleaf wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where do you see it in CC?

I got a notification when I opened it, indicating that the default had changed, and I can see it on /model. Only on a max (20x) account, not there on a Pro one.

I'm curious, what does it say on /model?

For reference, my options are:

    ╭─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
    │                                                                                             │
    │  Select Model                                                                               │
    │  Switch between Claude models. Applies to this session and future Claude Code sessions.     │
    │  For custom model names, specify with --model.                                              │
    │                                                                                             │
    │     1. Default (recommended)  Opus 4.1 for up to 50% of usage limits, then use Sonnet 4     │
    │     2. Opus                   Opus 4.1 for complex tasks · Reaches usage limits faster      │
    │     3. Sonnet                 Sonnet 4 for daily use                                        │
    │     4. Opus Plan Mode         Use Opus 4.1 in plan mode, Sonnet 4 otherwise                 │
    │                                                                                             │
    ╰─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

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

#426

Post by drums8787 »

not_that_d wrote: post #304

My experience with the current tools so far: 1. It helps to get me going with new languages, frameworks, utilities or full green field stuff. After that I expend a lot of time parsing the code to understand what it wrote that I kind of "trust" it because it is too tedious but "it works". 2. When working with languages or frameworks that I know, I find it makes me unproductive, the amount of time I spend writing a goo…

My experience is the opposite I guess. I am having a great time using claude to quickly implement little "filler features" that require a good amount of typing and pulling from/editing different sources. Nothing that requires much brainpower beyond remembering the details of some sub system, finding the right files, and typing.

Once the code is written, review, test and done. And on to more fun things.

Maybe what has made it work is that these tasks have all fit comfortably within existing code patterns.

My next step is to break down bigger & more complex changes into claude friendly bites to save me more grunt work.

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

#427

Post by brulard »

abc_lisper wrote: post #248
wiremine wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. > For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. How do we reconcile these two comments? I think that's a core question of the industry right now. My take, as a CTO, is this: we're giving people new tools, and very little training on the techniques that…

I doubt there is much art to getting LLM work for you, despite all the hoopla. Any competent engineer can figure that much out. The real dichotomy is this. If you are aware of the tools/APIs and the Domain, you are better off writing the code on your own, except may be shallow changes like refactorings. OTOH, if you are not familiar with the domain/tools, using a LLM gives you a huge legup by preventing you from gett…

I believe there IS much art in LLMs and Agents especially. Maybe you can get like 20% boost quite quickly, but there is so much room to grow it to maybe 500% long term.

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

#428

Post by artursapek »

epiccoleman wrote: post #147
artursapek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can "force" it by just paying them $200 (which is nothing compared to the value)

is Opus that much better than Sonnet? My sub is $20 a month, so I guess I'd have to buy that I'm going to get a 10x boost, which seems dubious

Yes, Opus is much better at complicated architecture

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

#429

Post by rtuin »

rvnx wrote: post #87
gdudeman wrote: post #83

A tip for those who both use Claude Code and are worried about token use (which you should be if you're stuffing 400k tokens into context even if you're on 20x Max): 1. Build context for the work you're doing. Put lots of your codebase into the context window. 2. Do work, but at each logical stopping point hit double escape to rewind to the context-filled checkpoint. You do not spend those tokens to rewind to that po…

Thank you for the tips, do you know how to rollback latest changes ? Trying very hard to do it, but seems like Git is the only way ?

Quick tip when working with Claude Code and Git: When you're happy with an intermediate result, stage the changes by running `git add` (no commit). That makes it possible to always go back to the staged changes when Claude messes up. You can then just discard the unstaged changes and don't have to roll back to the latest commit.

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

#430

Post by unlikelytomato »

drums8787 wrote: post #426
not_that_d wrote: post #304

My experience with the current tools so far: 1. It helps to get me going with new languages, frameworks, utilities or full green field stuff. After that I expend a lot of time parsing the code to understand what it wrote that I kind of "trust" it because it is too tedious but "it works". 2. When working with languages or frameworks that I know, I find it makes me unproductive, the amount of time I spend writing a goo…

My experience is the opposite I guess. I am having a great time using claude to quickly implement little "filler features" that require a good amount of typing and pulling from/editing different sources. Nothing that requires much brainpower beyond remembering the details of some sub system, finding the right files, and typing. Once the code is written, review, test and done. And on to more fun things. Maybe what has…

I wish I shared this experience. There are virtually no filter features for me to work on. When things feel like filler on my team, it's generally a sign of tech debt and we wouldn't want to have it generate all the code it would take. What are some examples of filler features for you?

On the other hand, it does cost me about 8 hours a week debugging issues created by bad autocompletes from my team. The last 6 months have gotten really bad with that. But that is a different issue.

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