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