Big Upgrade for Claude Sonnet, Developer Comms Controversy
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is out. It’s better than Opus 4.5 across most of the benchmarks and even surpasses Opus 4.6 in two categories: office tasks and financial analysis. Plus, it’s really good at browser/computer-use-based tasks. If you have simple agents, switch to Sonnet 4.6 and make your limits go further. Sonnet 4.6 is also now the default model for free Claude users. My recommendation to people outside the AI circle has always been ChatGPT because Claude’s free tier was worthless (in terms of compute and features). This upgrade also brings a lot of features like file creation, connectors, etc., to the free tier. Claude also got better at using web search and not filling up the context window. But it wouldn’t be AI without a little drama… First some context; Anthropic and OpenAI both offer heavily subsidised $200/mo plans (~15x less than if you used the API’s), but the two companies are handling third-party developer access very differently. Anthropic told developers in January that building on the Agent SDK (formerly Claude Code SDK) with a Claude subscription was fine, then updated their docs recently to say the opposite. And have since refused to give a clear answer on whether open-source apps can let users bring their own subscription. Theo has a really good breakdown of it here.
Miért fontos?
The general concern here is that Anthropic's opaque policy reversals and insular culture are creating real uncertainty for developers trying to build on their platform.