Context window severely reduced as of 2026-06-04 — breaking daily development workflows

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

was working fine yesterday, now hitting 32K cap on normal multi-file builds, forcing 8+ sequential agents for tasks that previously took 1 session.

What Should Happen?

Sessions should support the same context window as before (~200K) to allow multi-file reads, large codebases, and complex builds without hitting limits mid-task.

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open Claude Code (v2.1.160) in a large existing codebase
2. Start a session that requires reading multiple large files (e.g. a 5000-line i18n translation file)
3. Ask Claude to read the file in chunks using the Read tool (400 lines at a time)
4. After ~12 Read tool calls, session hits context limit and cuts off mid-task
5. Previously (before 2026-06-04) the same task completed in a single session without hitting any limit
6. Now requires splitting one task across 8 separate agent sessions to complete

Claude Model

Sonnet (default)

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

2.1.160 (Claude Code)

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

_No response_