Claude Opus 4.6: Anthropic Raises the Bar with Agent Teams and 1M Context
- Internet Pros Team
- February 6, 2026
- AI & Technology
Just two days after releasing Opus 4.5, Anthropic has unveiled Claude Opus 4.6, a model that doesn't just iterate but fundamentally redefines what AI agents can accomplish. With a 1 million token context window, pioneering agent teams architecture, and top scores across virtually every major benchmark, Opus 4.6 marks a turning point for enterprise AI.
What's New in Opus 4.6?
While Opus 4.5 already impressed with its coding and reasoning prowess, Opus 4.6 goes further by introducing capabilities that move AI from assistant to autonomous collaborator. The headline features center on coordination, context, and intelligence.
Headline Features
- 1 million token context window (beta) with 128K token output
- Agent teams: multiple AI agents working in parallel on complex tasks
- Adaptive thinking: Claude decides how deeply to reason per task
- Context compaction for sustained long-running agentic sessions
- Top benchmark scores across coding, reasoning, and retrieval tasks
Agent Teams: AI That Delegates
The most groundbreaking addition in Opus 4.6 is agent teams. Developers can now assemble multiple Claude agents that work in parallel, splitting complex projects into segmented tasks. Think of it like a project manager that can spin up specialized workers: one agent reviews code quality, another handles documentation, a third runs test suites, all coordinated through a lead agent.
This isn't just multithreading. Each subagent operates with its own context and objectives while the orchestrator synthesizes their outputs into a unified result. For enterprise workflows like full codebase audits, multi-document analysis, or large-scale data processing, this means dramatically faster turnaround with higher quality output.
Parallel Execution
Multiple agents tackle different parts of a task simultaneously, reducing completion time on complex projects.
Coordinated Output
A lead agent orchestrates subagents and merges their work into a coherent final deliverable.
1 Million Token Context Window
Opus 4.6 is the first model in the Claude family to offer a 1 million token context window in beta. To put that in perspective, that's roughly 3,000 pages of text, an entire codebase, or hundreds of documents loaded simultaneously. Combined with 128K output tokens, the model can process and generate at a scale previously impossible.
But raw context size is only part of the story. Opus 4.6 scores 76% on the MRCR v2 needle-in-haystack benchmark, compared to Sonnet 4.5's 18.5%. This means the model doesn't just hold more information; it actually retrieves and uses it accurately across the entire window.
"Opus 4.6 demonstrates substantially better planning, code navigation in large codebases, edge case handling, and sustained agentic task performance compared to its predecessor."
Adaptive Thinking and Effort Controls
Opus 4.6 introduces adaptive thinking, where the model autonomously determines how much reasoning effort a prompt requires. A simple factual question gets a quick response, while a complex debugging problem triggers deep analysis, all without developer intervention.
For those who want fine-grained control, the API now offers four effort levels: low, medium, high (default), and max. This lets developers optimize the tradeoff between intelligence, speed, and cost depending on the use case.
Low
Fast responses for simple queries
Medium
Balanced speed and depth
High
Default thorough analysis
Max
Maximum reasoning power
Benchmark Dominance
Opus 4.6 doesn't just compete on benchmarks; it leads them. The model achieves the highest score on Terminal-Bench 2.0 for agentic coding, leads Humanity's Last Exam for multidisciplinary reasoning, and tops BrowseComp for information retrieval. Against GPT-5.2, Opus 4.6 outperforms by approximately 144 Elo points on GDPval-AA, a benchmark measuring economically valuable tasks.
Key Benchmark Results
- Terminal-Bench 2.0: Highest score (agentic coding)
- Humanity's Last Exam: #1 (multidisciplinary reasoning)
- BrowseComp: Best performance (information retrieval)
- MRCR v2: 76% vs Sonnet 4.5's 18.5% (long-context accuracy)
- Life Sciences: 2x improvement over previous models
Enterprise Integration
Opus 4.6 deepens its integration with enterprise tools. Claude now works directly inside PowerPoint as a side panel for building presentations, and its Excel integration handles longer-running, multi-step tasks in a single pass. Context compaction allows the model to summarize older conversation context, enabling sustained sessions that would otherwise hit token limits.
Pricing and Availability
Opus 4.6 is available now on claude.ai, the Claude API, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Cloud. Pricing remains competitive at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, with extended context pricing at $10/$37.50 for sessions exceeding 200K tokens.
Getting Started
Opus 4.6 is available today through the Claude API with model ID claude-opus-4-6. Enterprise users can access it through Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud Vertex AI. Visit anthropic.com to start building with the most capable Claude model yet.
The Bottom Line
Claude Opus 4.6 is more than an upgrade. With agent teams, a massive context window, and adaptive intelligence, it signals a shift from AI as a tool you prompt to AI as a workforce you orchestrate. For developers and enterprises looking to build sophisticated AI-powered workflows, Opus 4.6 sets a new standard for what's possible.
