Feature Request: Increase context window beyond 200K for Max subscription users

Feature Request

Current behavior:
Claude Code hard-caps the context window at 200K tokens for all users, including Max ($100/mo) and Max 20x ($200/mo) subscribers. This applies even when using Claude Opus 4.6, which supports up to 1M tokens via the API.

Requested behavior:
Increase the available context window for Max subscription users in Claude Code. Even an intermediate step to 400K tokens would be a meaningful improvement for users working on large codebases, long refactoring sessions, or complex multi-file tasks.

Why this matters:

• Max subscribers are paying a premium specifically for heavy usage of Claude's most capable models
• The underlying model (Opus 4.6) already supports 1M tokens — the 200K cap is a Claude Code limitation, not a model limitation
• The current 200K window (minus system prompt, tools, skills, and autocompact buffer) leaves only ~150K of usable space for actual conversation
• Larger codebases and longer sessions frequently hit this limit, triggering autocompact and losing valuable context

Related issues:

• #24208 — Context display shows 200k instead of 1M
• #23714 — Opus 4.6 hard-caps at 200K, causes session crashes
• #28975 — Rate limit errors with 1M context on Max subscription
• #26428 — Sonnet 1M context window regression on Max plan

Suggested approach:

• A configurable context window size (e.g., via claude config) would give power users control over the trade-off between context size and response quality/speed
• Even a modest increase to 400K–500K would significantly improve the experience for Max subscribers without requiring the full 1M beta

🤖 Generated with Claude Code