# Developers and AI power users are taking to social media to accuse Anthropic of degrading the performance of Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Code.

*genai · news · 2026-04-13 · VentureBeat*

## Key points

- Anthropic changed Claude Opus 4.6's default reasoning effort to medium on March 3, 2026.
- A viral GitHub post by AMD's Senior Director analyzed 6,852 sessions, showing measurable performance regression since February.
- Anthropic confirmed a March 6 change reducing Claude Code's prompt-cache TTL from one hour to five minutes for some requests.
- Benchmark claims of Claude Opus 4.6's decline were challenged due to differing task counts and possible statistical noise.
- Anthropic denies secret model downgrades, attributing user complaints to disclosed product and interface changes.

**Companies:** AMD, Anthropic
**Countries:** United States

[Read the full story on VentureBeat](https://venturebeat.com/technology/is-anthropic-nerfing-claude-users-increasingly-report-performance)

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