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1M context is now generally available for Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6

claude.com

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Re: 1M context is now generally available for Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6

#31

Post by fnordpiglet »

8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote: post #10

Oh nice, does it mean less game of /compact, /clear, and updating CLAUDE.md with Claude Code?

I’ve been using 1M for a while and it defers it and makes it worse almost when it happens. Compacting a context that big loses a ton of fidelity. But I’ve taken to just editing the context instead (double esc). I also am planning to build an agent to slice the session logs up into contextually useful and useless discarding the useless and keeping things high fidelity that way. (I.e., carve up with a script the jsonl and have subagent haiku return the relevant parts and reconstructing the jsonl)

Re: 1M context is now generally available for Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6

#32

Post by dominotw »

johnwheeler wrote: post #13

This is incredible. I just blew through $200 last night in a few hours on 1M context. This is like the best news I've heard all year in regards to my business. What is OpenAIs response to this? Do they even have 1M context window or is it still opaque and "depends on the time of day"

rarely go over 25 percent in codex but i hit 80 on claude code in just a short time.

Re: 1M context is now generally available for Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6

#33

Post by ogig »

MikeNotThePope wrote: post #20
dimitri-vs wrote: post #3

The big change here is: > Standard pricing now applies across the full 1M window for both models, with no long-context premium. Media limits expand to 600 images or PDF pages. For Claude Code users this is huge - assuming coherence remains strong past 200k tok.

Is it ever useful to have a context window that full? I try to keep usage under 40%, or about 80k tokens, to avoid what Dex Horthy calls the dumb zone in his research-plan-implement approach. Works well for me so far. No vibes allowed: https://youtu.be/rmvDxxNubIg?is=adMmmKdVxraYO2yQ

When running long autonomous tasks it is quite frequent to fill the context, even several times. You are out of the loop so it just happens if Claude goes a bit in circles, or it needs to iterate over CI reds, or the task was too complex. I'm hoping a long context > small context + 2 compacts.

Re: 1M context is now generally available for Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6

#34

Post by dominotw »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #31
8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote: post #10

Oh nice, does it mean less game of /compact, /clear, and updating CLAUDE.md with Claude Code?

I’ve been using 1M for a while and it defers it and makes it worse almost when it happens. Compacting a context that big loses a ton of fidelity. But I’ve taken to just editing the context instead (double esc). I also am planning to build an agent to slice the session logs up into contextually useful and useless discarding the useless and keeping things high fidelity that way. (I.e., carve up with a script the jsonl…

til you can edit context. i keep a running log and /clear /reload log

Re: 1M context is now generally available for Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6

#35

Post by hagen8 »

dimitri-vs wrote: post #3

The big change here is: > Standard pricing now applies across the full 1M window for both models, with no long-context premium. Media limits expand to 600 images or PDF pages. For Claude Code users this is huge - assuming coherence remains strong past 200k tok.

Well, the question is what is contributing to the usage. Because as the context grows, the amount of input tokens are increasing. A model call with 800K token as input is 8 times more expensive than a model call with 100K tokens as input. Especially if we resume a conversation and caching does not hit, it would be very expensive with API pricing.

Re: 1M context is now generally available for Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6

#36

Post by [deleted] »

islewis wrote: post #30
dimitri-vs wrote: post #3

The big change here is: > Standard pricing now applies across the full 1M window for both models, with no long-context premium. Media limits expand to 600 images or PDF pages. For Claude Code users this is huge - assuming coherence remains strong past 200k tok.

The quality with the 1M window has been very poor for me, specifically for coding tasks. It constantly forgets stuff that has happened in the existing conversation. n=1, ymmv

[deleted]

Re: 1M context is now generally available for Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6

#37

Post by radley »

auggierose wrote: post #23
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #14

The weirdest thing about Claude pricing is their 5X pricing plan is 5 times the cost of the previous plan. Normally buying the bigger plan gives some sort of discount. At Claude, it's just "5 times more usage 5 times more cost, there you go".

It is not the plan they want you to buy. It is a pricing strategy to get you to buy the 20x plan.

5x Max is the plan I use because the Pro plan limits out so quickly. I don't use Claude full-time, but I do need Claude Code, and I do prefer to use Opus for everything because it's focused and less chatty.

Re: 1M context is now generally available for Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6

#38

Post by a_e_k »

dimitri-vs wrote: post #3

The big change here is: > Standard pricing now applies across the full 1M window for both models, with no long-context premium. Media limits expand to 600 images or PDF pages. For Claude Code users this is huge - assuming coherence remains strong past 200k tok.

I've been using the 1M window at work through our enterprise plan as I'm beginning to adopt AI in my development workflow (via Cline). It seems to have been holding up pretty well until about 700k+. Sometimes it would continue to do okay past that, sometimes it started getting a bit dumb around there.

(Note that I'm using it in more of a hands-on pair-programming mode, and not in a fully-automated vibecoding mode.)

Re: 1M context is now generally available for Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6

#39

Post by dimitri-vs »

MikeNotThePope wrote: post #20
dimitri-vs wrote: post #3

The big change here is: > Standard pricing now applies across the full 1M window for both models, with no long-context premium. Media limits expand to 600 images or PDF pages. For Claude Code users this is huge - assuming coherence remains strong past 200k tok.

Is it ever useful to have a context window that full? I try to keep usage under 40%, or about 80k tokens, to avoid what Dex Horthy calls the dumb zone in his research-plan-implement approach. Works well for me so far. No vibes allowed: https://youtu.be/rmvDxxNubIg?is=adMmmKdVxraYO2yQ

It's kind of like having a 16 gallon gas tank in your car versus a 4 gallon tank. You don't need the bigger one the majority of the time, but the range anxiety that comes with the smaller one and annoyance when you DO need it is very real.

Re: 1M context is now generally available for Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6

#40

Post by boredtofears »

ogig wrote: post #33
MikeNotThePope wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it ever useful to have a context window that full? I try to keep usage under 40%, or about 80k tokens, to avoid what Dex Horthy calls the dumb zone in his research-plan-implement approach. Works well for me so far. No vibes allowed: https://youtu.be/rmvDxxNubIg?is=adMmmKdVxraYO2yQ

When running long autonomous tasks it is quite frequent to fill the context, even several times. You are out of the loop so it just happens if Claude goes a bit in circles, or it needs to iterate over CI reds, or the task was too complex. I'm hoping a long context > small context + 2 compacts.

All of those things are smells imo, you should be very weary of any code output from a task that causes that much thrashing to occur. In most cases it’s better to rewind or reset and adapt your prompt to avoid the looping (which usually means a more narrowly defined scope)
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