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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

#331

Post by raincole »

n_u wrote: post #236
syntaxing wrote: post #144

It’s interesting because my career went from doing higher level language (Python) to lower language (C++ and C). Opus and the like is amazing at Python, honestly sometimes better than me but it does do some really stupid architectural decisions occasionally. But when it comes to embedded stuff, it’s still like a junior engineer. Unsure if that will ever change but I wonder if it’s just the quality and availability of…

I've found it's ok at Rust. I think a lot of existing Rust code is high quality and also the stricter Rust compiler enforces that the output of the LLM is somewhat reasonable.

Quite sure it's not about the language but the domain.

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

#332

Post by brookst »

lukan wrote: post #282
SequoiaHope wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep I have an autonomous task where it has been running for 8 hours now and counting. It compacts context all the time. I’m pretty skeptical of the quality in long sessions like this so I have to run a follow on session to critically examine everything that was done. Long context will be great for this.

Are those long unsupervised sessions useful? In the sense, do they produce useful code or do you throw most of it away?

I get very useful code from long sessions. It’s all about having a framework of clear documentation, a clear multi-step plan including validation against docs and critical code reviews, acceptance criteria, and closed-loop debugging (it can launch/restsart the app, control it, and monitor logs)

I am heavily involved in developing those, and then routinely let opus run overnight and have either flawless or nearly flawless product in the morning.

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

#334

Post by brookst »

takwatanabe wrote: post #326
tudelo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean if you don't have your company paying for it I wouldn't bother... We are talking sessions of 500-1000 dollars in cost.

Right. At Opus 4.6 rates, once you're at 700k context, each tool call costs ~$1 just for cache reads alone. 100 tool calls = $100+ before you even count outputs. 'Standard pricing' is doing a lot of work here lol

Cache reads don’t count as input tokens you pay for lol.

https://www.claudecodecamp.com/p/how-prompt-caching-actually...

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

#335

Post by brookst »

MikeNotThePope wrote: post #97
ricksunny wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I'm yet to seriously dive into vibe coding or AI-assisted coding, does the IDE experience offer tracking a tally of the context size? (So you know when you're getting close or entering the "dumb zone")?

The 2 I know, Cursor and Claude Code, will give you a percentage used for the context window. So if you know the size of the window, you can deduce the number of tokens used.

Claude code also gives you a granular breakdown of what’s using context window (system prompt, tools, conversation history, etc). /context

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

#336

Post by wat10000 »

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

I've used it many times for long-running investigations. When I'm deep in the weeds with a ton of disassembly listings and memory dumps and such, I don't really want to interrupt all of that with a compaction or handoff cycle and risk losing important info. It seems to remain very capable with large contexts at least in that scenario.

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

#337

Post by [deleted] »

necovek wrote: post #287
syntaxing wrote: post #144

It’s interesting because my career went from doing higher level language (Python) to lower language (C++ and C). Opus and the like is amazing at Python, honestly sometimes better than me but it does do some really stupid architectural decisions occasionally. But when it comes to embedded stuff, it’s still like a junior engineer. Unsure if that will ever change but I wonder if it’s just the quality and availability of…

As someone who did Python professionally from a software engineering perspective, I've actually found Python to be pretty crappy really: unaware of _good_ idioms living outside tutorials and likely 90% of Python code out there that was simply hacked together quickly. I have not tested, but I would expect more niche ecosystems like Rust or Haskell or Erlang to have better overall training set (developer who care about…

[deleted]

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

#338

Post by toddmerrill »

hedora wrote: post #164
girvo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My annoyance with plan mode is where it sticks the .md file, kind of hides it away which makes it annoying to clear context and start up a new phase from the PLAN file. But that might just be a skill issue on my end

Even worse, it just randomly blows away the plan file without asking for permission. No idea what they were thinking when they designed this feature. The plan file names are randomly generated, so it could just keep making new ones forever for free (it would take a LONG time for the disk space to matter), but instead, for long plans, I have to back the plan file up if it gets stuck. Otherwise, I say "You should take…

My experience also. The claude code document feature is a real missed opportunity. As you can see in this discussion, we all have to do it manually if we want it to work.

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

#339

Post by Culonavirus »

jhatemyjob wrote: post #189
sarchertech wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kinds of things are you building? This is not my experience at all. Just today I asked Claude using opus 4.6 to build out a test harness for a new dynamic database diff tool. Everything seemed to be fine but it built a test suite for an existing diff tool. It set everything up in the new directory, but it was actually testing code and logic from a preexisting directory despite the plan being correct before I tol…

Similar experience. I use these AI tools on a daily basis. I have tons of examples like yours. In one recent instance I explicitly told it in the prompt to not use memcpy, and it used memcpy anyway, and generated a 30-line diff after thinking for 20 minutes. In that amount of time I created a 10-line diff that didn't use memcpy. I think it's the big investors' extremely powerful incentives manifesting in the form of…

> people who are blown away by these new releases either don't spend a lot of time writing code, or are being paid to be blown away

Careful, or you're going to get slapped by the stupid astroturfing rule... but you're correct. Also there's the sunk cost fallacy, post purchase rationalization, choice supportive bias, hell look at r/MyBoyfriendIsAI... some people get very attached to these bots, they're like their work buddies or pets, so you don't even need to pay them, they'll glaze the crap out it themselves.

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

#340

Post by alecco »

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

Offtopic: I find it remarkable the shortened YT url has a tracking cost of 57% extra length. We live in stupid times.
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