Claude 2 Released: 100K Token Context Window

Anthropic just released Claude 2, and the headline feature is impossible to ignore: a 100K token context window. That's roughly 75,000 words, or about the length of a full novel. This isn't a minor update. Claude 2 represents a significant leap in what AI can actually do with your documents and data. ## Why This Matters Most AI tools force you to work in tiny chunks. GPT-4 gives you 8K tokens (32K for premium). Claude 2 gives you 100K tokens right out of the gate. **That means you can upload entire contracts, research reports, or quarterly financials and ask questions about the whole document.** No more splitting files into sections or losing context between conversations. For business operations, this changes the game for document review, analysis, and synthesis work that used to require hours of manual reading. ## What Changed Claude 2 brings several major improvements: **Context Window** - 100K tokens (up from 9K in Claude 1) - Handles documents up to 75,000 words - Maintains coherence across the entire context **Coding Capabilities** - Scored 71.2% on Codex HumanEval (up from 56% in Claude 1.3) - Better at Python, JavaScript, and data analysis - Improved debugging and code explanation **File Upload Support** - Upload PDFs, TXT files, and CSVs directly - No more copy-paste formatting issues - Works in the web interface at claude.ai **Improved Performance** - Longer responses (up to 3,000+ tokens) - Better instruction following - Reduced harmful outputs **Enhanced API** - Same pricing structure as Claude 1.3 - New claude-2 model endpoint - Backward compatible with existing integrations ## Real-World Applications At The Operations Guide, we've been testing Claude 2 since early access. Here's what actually works: **Contract Review**: Upload a 50-page vendor agreement and ask specific questions about liability clauses, payment terms, or termination conditions. Claude 2 finds the relevant sections and explains them in plain English. **Financial Analysis**: Drop your quarterly board deck or financial statements and ask for trend analysis, anomaly detection, or executive summaries. The 100K context means it sees the full picture. **Research Synthesis**: Feed it multiple research papers or competitive analyses and ask it to identify patterns, contradictions, or gaps in the data. **Coding Projects**: Review entire codebases (within the 100K limit), debug complex issues, or generate documentation that understands the full system architecture. ## How to Access It Claude 2 is available in two ways: **Web Interface**: Visit claude.ai to use Claude 2 directly in your browser. Upload files, have conversations, and export results. Available in the US and UK. **API Access**: The Claude API now includes the claude-2 model endpoint. Same pricing as before: $11.02 per million tokens for input, $32.68 per million for output. Existing Claude API users can switch to the new model by updating their model parameter to "claude-2". No other code changes required. ## What to Know Before Using It **The 100K context isn't free**: At API pricing, analyzing a full 100K token document costs about $1.10 per query. Budget accordingly. **Upload quality matters**: PDFs with complex formatting sometimes confuse the parser. Clean text files work best. **It's not search**: Claude reads sequentially. For documents with multiple unrelated sections, you might still need to extract specific chapters first. ## Quick Takeaway Claude 2's 100K context window opens up document analysis workflows that weren't practical before. If your work involves reading, synthesizing, or analyzing long documents, this is worth testing immediately.