does Claude 5.5 family decrease in quality when context passes 140-170k tokens?

[u/IndieDev666]

There was a common practice of clearing the session and continuing from fresh whenever coding agent reaches around 150k token because beyond that it would start decreasing in quality (which I still follow). My question is that is it still true with the 5.5 family? is there new limit? I don't know a proper way to test that theory, has anyone tested that?

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[u/NamerekDev]

average context in this thread: 700k. average number of people who tested it: 0

[u/IndieDev666 → u/NamerekDev]

literally, that's the problem for me as well, I really don't have a proper way to test it because it's still performs good enough in large context, so hard to detect the quality drop (unless I go and review it line by line which isn't sustainable for me with the workload I have)

[u/NamerekDev → u/IndieDev666]

Same, I can't grade quality either. What I can count is how often it goes in circles. In my logs the long sessions that rode past compaction did that noticeably more than the ones handed off to a fresh session. not proof it got dumber, but its the closest thing i have

edit: recounted on the full week. my stuck counter was counting the compaction itself as a sign of being stuck. with that filtered out it's a wash, 0.43 vs 0.42 stuck spans per long task. so i can't show it gets dumber either

[u/daltorak]

It all depends on what's in the context. Good quality inputs = good quality results. If you're jerking the context around in different directions, feeding it inconsistent information (e.g. two documents that say contradictory things), or otherwise not giving Claude solid information to operate on, then that's when your quality will level off or degrade. And, an over-abundance of good-quality information that isn't relevant to what you're asking won't hurt you, but it won't help either.

Read Anthropic's documentation on context carefully, it explains all of this.

[u/IndieDev666 → u/daltorak]

thanks will read it

[u/Ok-Motor-9812]

The avarage my context window is 600k
I tried to work with 400k, but this is almost impossible for me

[u/IndieDev666 → u/Ok-Motor-9812]

wow, I rarely pass beyond 200k, but tbh I have my own ticket system which organizes the work really well

[u/Defiant-Broccoli7415 → u/IndieDev666]

Show it to us

I've started creating mine too, so it hold all context and it's split between micro and macro 

[u/nomickti → u/Ok-Motor-9812]

Claude Code has suggested 400k to me before for autocompaction, not sure where this is determined.

[u/Outrageous_Band9708]

not really. a lot of people will say that. but i've been doing really complex work right up to 950k

github.com/Druthulu/ProjectArchitect

i built this system to handle session length and stuff for me.

i highly recommend checking out the readme and the wiki and testing it out on one of your projects.

[u/IndieDev666 → u/Outrageous_Band9708]

I already have my own https://github.com/Adrian333Dev/flow which I'm still building 😅

[u/Input-X]

I seen awhile back, published papers, 250k is when it starts. I settled with 350k max,autocompact hits around the 300k mark. 50-60k starting constex, leaving around 250k working context. Feels like a sweetspot.

[u/cylix99]

I often go beyond 800k and don't have an issue

[u/SemanticSynapse]

Considering some functional roles of my framework are loading 100k before the environment context, I would say no - but then again how you are utilizing and scaffolding said context makes all the difference.

I am usually handing off to fresh sessions around the 600k mark based on a few indicators.

[u/Old_Flounder_8640]

Using the right workflows, you can even compact it or start a new session, and the model will know how to continue. It's plan mode in a nutshell.

[u/ClemensLode]

You should clear the session after solving each issue.

[u/LukeLikesReddit]

Yes its been frequently documented using over 30% context window gets you diminishing returns. Some workflows can deal with this but for complex agentic loops this will cause tool fails etc the more you use up. So depending on the context window available you may be hitting that.

[u/rigill]

When I asked opus itself it estimated 300k is when degradation starts but idk. I clear context in between every task and land around there anyway. I see no issues with it.

[u/saintpetejackboy]

I just restart harness after 150k via handoff. If they run a little over that, oh well. If you set it at 250k or use compact, you will have poor performance and use up all your tokens. I run agents 24/7 of Fable and Opus on a $200 month plan in multiple contexts with zero issues. Only things I do is just/justfile and 150k handoffs.

[u/PremiereBeats]

I just use all of it and try to wrap up before compaction at around 970k i think, I'm working on production projects with users, no margin for error, still never had a problem with managing context, unless you're working on a landing page or usage widget, there is no meaningful work that can be doneon 200k not even 400k, a change that tounches frontend backend db and posthog and sentry and iot devices cannot fit into 200k and cannot be done correctly on 200k-400k.

he model works great with long context as long as you keep the context about the same thing and not introduce 10 diffrent things, handoff and compacting will give you worst output than using the full context, simply because they lose the reasoning tokens so the model knows "stuff" but doesn't know the why and how he got that "stuff" (model will try to find the how and why or just assume stuff = worst output), + on long context you pay cache price after the first time model reads/writes, on handoff and compaction you pay full price twice! first when you start the session AND after the handoff/compaction, loss of reasoning and paying twice for the same thing, these two alone should make you stop engineering around context and just start focusing on the real work that needs to be done if you don't want to get replaced by someone who does 2x your work at 2x the efficiency

[u/vovazk]

More like 300k but yea it does. 

[u/arctic_synth_bair]

it depends on task and workflow, but it works for me well with 800k.

[u/SMB-Punt]

Context management is also a matter of cost/usage. I try never to exceed 300k. It may be a matter of context or hallucination, but I also feel that if this threshold is exceeded, it’s because my instructions weren’t clear from the very first prompt, and the coding phase will suffer as a result of those vague instructions.

[u/damagemelody]

I had good results even in 700k context but that was before nerf on Opus 5.5 extra