Has a "N million context window" spec ever been meaningful? Very old, very terrible, models "supported" 1M context window, but would lose track after two small paragraphs of context into a conversation (looking at you early Gemini).

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libraryofbabel 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Umm, Sonnet 4.5 has a 1m context window option if you are using it through the api, and it works pretty well. I tend not to reach for it much these days because I prefer Opus 4.5 so much that I don't mind the added pain of clearing context, but it's perfectly usable. I'm very excited I'll get this from Opus now too.

	▲	nomel an hour ago \| parent [-]
		If you're getting on along with 4.5, then that suggests you didn't actually need the large context window, for your use. If that's true, what's the clear tell that it's working well? Am I misunderstanding? Did they solve the "lost in the middle" problem? Proof will be in the pudding, I suppose. But that number alone isn't all that meaningful for many (most?) practical uses. Claude 4.5 often starts reverting bug fixes ~50k tokens back, which isn't a context window length problem. Things fall apart much sooner than the context window length for all of my use cases (which are more reasoning related). What is a good use case? Do those use cases require strong verification to combat the "lost in the middle" problems?