Ok so hear me out because either im hallucinating or claude code is. Since the 1M context dropped ive been noticing some weird shit. i run 20+ sessions a day building a payment processing MVP so this isnt a one-off vibe check i live in this thing. Whats happening: around 300K tokens the output quality tanks noticeably at ~190-200K something happens that genuinely feels like a new instance took over. like it’ll do something, then 10K tokens later act like it never happened and start fresh. thats not degradation thats a handoff goes in circles WAY more than before. revisiting stuff it already solved, trying approaches it already failed at.Never had this problem this bad before the 1M update I know context management is everything. Ive been preaching this forever. I dont just yeet a massive task and let it run to 500K. I actively manage sessions, i am an enemy of compact, i rarely let things go past 300K because i know how retention degrades. So this isnt a skill issue (or is it?). The default effort level switched from high to medium . Check your settings. i switched back to high, started a fresh session, and early results look way better.Could be placebo but my colleague noticed the same degradation independently before we compared notes. Tinfoil hats on 1M context isnt actually 1M continuous context. its a router that does some kind of auto-compaction/summary around 200K and hands off to a fresh instance. would explain the cliff perfectly. If thats the case just tell us anthropic — we can work with it, but dont sell it as 1M when the effective window is 200K with a lossy summary. anyone else seeing this or am i cooked? Or found a way to adapt to the new big context window? For context : Im the biggest Anthropic / Claude fan - this is not a hate post. I am ok with it and i will figure it out - just want some more opinions. But the behavior of going in circles smells like the times where gemini offered the user the $$$ to find a developer on fiver and implement it because it just couldn’t. Long live Anhtropic! submitted by /u/ToiletSenpai
Originally posted by u/ToiletSenpai on r/ClaudeCode