Anthropic speeds up Claude Code with message threads. But your token bill stays the same.
Anthropic released message threads, a new feature for Claude Code and its Messages API that optimizes long-running sessions by avoiding repetitive transmission of entire conversation histories. Now in public beta and enabled by default for most Claude Code users, the feature reduced median time to first token by approximately 35% for requests with 500,000 to 1 million tokens. Token billing remains unchanged, and the capability extends beyond Claude Code to any developer building AI agents handling lengthy conversations or large datasets.
Key points
- Message threads reduce time to first token by ~35% for large conversations
- Prevents re-sending entire conversation history with each API request
- Available in public beta; default for most Claude Code users
- No increase in token billing costs
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