Claude Opus 4.6 is here: a new level for Agentic AI and Reasoning

With the introduction of Claude Opus 4.6 on February 5, 2026, Anthropic has unveiled its most powerful model to date. The update focuses not only on raw computational power but specifically aims to improve agentic capabilities, i.e., the competence of an AI to autonomously plan, execute, and verify complex tasks over longer periods. At its core is an AI that acts less like a simple tool and more like an experienced employee who autonomously drives projects forward.

Strengths and technical innovations

One of the outstanding strengths of Opus 4.6 is the ability for Adaptive Thinking. The model recognizes contextual cues and independently decides when it needs to think more deeply and check its reasoning before giving an answer. As a result, the model makes fewer errors on complex problems and considers edge cases that other models often overlook. While this can lead to higher costs or latencies for simple tasks, developers have the option to control this behavior via new "Effort Controls."

Another technical breakthrough concerns the context window. Opus 4.6 offers a context window of 1 million tokens for the first time in the Opus class (in beta phase). Particularly impressive here is the solution to the problem of so-called "Context Rot", where the performance of models decreases the more information they have to process. In tests where specific information had to be found in huge amounts of text ("Needle-in-a-haystack"), Opus 4.6 achieved a success rate of 76%, while Sonnet 4.5 only reached 18.5%. This enables much more reliable processing of extremely large amounts of data without the usual drop in performance.

Diverse Application Possibilities in Practice

The areas of application for Opus 4.6 are broad and strongly target professional work environments. In the field of software development, the model functions almost like a Senior Engineer. It can navigate large codebases, autonomously identify errors, and plan and execute complex migrations. Integration into Claude Code makes it possible to assemble teams of AI agents working on tasks in parallel.

For knowledge workers outside of programming, Opus 4.6 offers significant improvements in common office applications. In Excel, the model can interpret unstructured data, derive structures without guidance, and make multi-step changes in one pass. A preview for PowerPoint shows the ability to create visual presentations from this data that adhere to existing layouts and brand guidelines.

The model also shows strength in highly specialized fields: In legal tests (BigLaw Bench), it achieved an accuracy of 90.2%, and in cybersecurity, it was able to deliver the best results in investigations in 38 out of 40 cases.

Also impressive is the strength of Opus 4.6 in search and information retrieval (Agentic Search). In the BrowseComp benchmark, Opus 4.6 achieves a value of 84 percent, significantly ahead of Gemini 3 Pro with Deep Research, which reaches 59.2 percent.

Comparison with Competition

Claude Opus 4.6 positions itself aggressively against the current top models in the industry, especially against OpenAI's GPT-5.2. Direct comparisons show that Opus 4.6 is ahead, particularly in tasks that require deep understanding and agentic planning.

On the GDPval-AA benchmark, which measures performance in economically valuable knowledge work, Opus 4.6 significantly surpasses the next best model in the industry (GPT-5.2). The model also sets new records in searching for hard-to-find information (BrowseComp) and complex programming tasks (Terminal-Bench 2.0).

The following table summarizes the performance of Claude Opus 4.6 compared to competitors and predecessors:

Conclusion

Claude Opus 4.6 sets the benchmark in many areas and relegates competitors to lower ranks. It pushes the boundaries of what AI can autonomously accomplish – from mere text generation to genuine problem-solving in complex systems. In particular, the agentic use of tools and computers is one of the great strengths of Claude Opus 4.6.