Anthropic releases Opus 4.6 with ‘support teams’

On Thursday, Anthropic released the latest version of Opus – its flagship version and the most important example of Claude Code. Opus 4.5 was just released Last November and, with 4.6, the company has sought to increase the creativity of the model and its appeal, allowing the use of different models and customers.

Perhaps the most notable addition to the latest version of Opus is the inclusion of what the company calls “assistance teams” – groups of assistants that can break down large tasks into team tasks.

“Instead of one agent to work one after the other, you can distribute the work to several agents – each one has its own role and communicates directly with the others,” says the company. Scott White, Director of Marketing at Anthropic, compared the innovation to having a talented team of people working for you, noting that the division of responsibilities of the assistant helps them “coordinate (and work) faster.” Support groups are available for viewing surveys for API users and subscribers.

Opus 4.6 also comes with a long window – meaning the software can store more memory for each user session. This new model offers 1 million symbols, which is similar to that of the company’s Sonnet (types 4 and 4.5) currently provides. This type of window allows for work related to large codes and can allow for the maintenance of large documents, the company says.

The new version of Opus also integrates Claude directly into PowerPoint as an access panel. This is a step up from the original integration of PowerPoint and chatbot. Previously, a user could tell Claude to create a PowerPoint deck, but the file had to be transferred to PowerPoint to edit the presentation, White said. Now, the presentation can be created within PowerPoint, with direct support from Claude.

White told TechCrunch that Opus evolved from a brand that was very good at one area — namely, programming — into a program that “could be very useful” for people with a lot of experience. “We saw a lot of non-technical people working on Claude Code because it was such an amazing engine to work with,” he said. White added that the types of people the company has seen using it include not only software developers, but product managers, financial professionals, and people from a variety of other industries.