Claude Opus 4.6 Just Dropped: Everything You Need to Know

Anthropic just released Claude Opus 4.6, their most powerful AI model yet. It's a significant upgrade across the board—better at coding, longer context, improved reasoning, and new multi-agent capabilities.

Here's what matters and why you should pay attention.

What's new in Opus 4.6?

According to Anthropic's announcement, Opus 4.6 brings major upgrades:

• 1M token context window — First time for an Opus-class model. That's roughly 750,000 words of context.
• Better coding skills — Plans more carefully, catches its own mistakes, works reliably in large codebases
• Longer sustained work — Can stay on complex agentic tasks without losing track
• Agent teams — Multiple Claude agents can now coordinate on tasks together in Claude Code
• Adaptive thinking — New API feature for more sophisticated reasoning

Benchmark performance

Opus 4.6 isn't just an incremental update. It's setting new records:

• Terminal-Bench 2.0 — Highest score on agentic coding evaluation
• Humanity's Last Exam — Leads all frontier models on complex multidisciplinary reasoning
• GDPval-AA — Outperforms GPT-5.2 by 144 Elo points on knowledge work tasks
• BrowseComp — Best performance at finding hard-to-locate information online

The GDPval-AA benchmark is particularly interesting—it measures performance on economically valuable tasks in finance, legal, and other professional domains. Opus 4.6 beating GPT-5.2 by a wide margin suggests real practical advantages for knowledge workers.

The 1M token context window

This is the headline feature for most users. Previous Opus models had smaller context limits, which meant losing information in long conversations or large documents.

With 1M tokens, you can:

• Feed entire codebases for review
• Analyze lengthy legal documents without chunking
• Have extended conversations without Claude forgetting earlier context
• Process research papers, transcripts, and reports in full

For anyone who's hit context limits before, this alone makes Opus 4.6 worth trying.

Agent teams in Claude Code

Anthropic introduced a new capability where multiple Claude agents can work together on complex tasks. Instead of one agent working sequentially, you can split work across specialized agents that coordinate directly.

This is aimed at developers using Claude Code for larger projects—think code review, refactoring, and multi-file changes happening in parallel.

Safety improvements

Anthropic emphasizes that Opus 4.6 maintains strong safety properties. Their system card shows low rates of misaligned behavior across safety evaluations—as good as or better than other frontier models.

For enterprise users concerned about deploying AI at scale, this matters.

How to try Opus 4.6

Opus 4.6 is available now on claude.ai. If you have a Claude Pro subscription, you can access it immediately.

For API users, the model is available through Anthropic's API with the new compaction feature for handling long-running tasks.

Want to talk to Opus 4.6? If you prefer voice input over typing, check out TalkaType—it lets you speak to AI assistants on the web.

Bottom line

Opus 4.6 is a meaningful upgrade. The 1M token context window removes a major friction point. The benchmark results suggest genuine capability improvements, not just marketing claims.

If you've been using ChatGPT and haven't tried Claude recently, Opus 4.6 is a good reason to revisit. The model excels at exactly the kind of deep work—coding, research, document analysis—where you want an AI that can hold complex context and reason carefully.

Try it at claude.ai.