The update to Claude Code's adaptive thinking has drastically reduced its internal reasoning characters from ~2,200 to ~560. This change could impact how AI systems are designed for efficiency and decision-making, which is crucial for engineers building advanced AI applications.
Big points here:
Before February 2026, Claude Code averaged ~2,200 characters of internal reasoning before taking action. After the Opus 4.6 "adaptive thinking" default rolled out on February 9, that number dropped to ~560 characters. This matters because reasoning depth
Anthropic's change to Claude code's cache TTL from 1 hour to 5 minutes has led to increased quota usage and costs. This adjustment could impact developers relying on their API for cost management and performance optimization.
It looks like Anthropic changed claude code’s cache TTL from 1h to 5m in March, causing significant quota and cost inflation.