What changed between Claude 4.5 and Claude 4.6 – and why we still reach for it first
I've been building with Claude since before Constitutional AI became mainstream, and I've watched it quietly become our most reliable tool across everything from custom FastAPI pipelines to production codebases. Yet most people still don't know what Claude actually is—which is exactly why I wrote this. This guide covers the current model family as of April 2026, explains what Agent Skills and Cowork actually do in practice, and shows you where Claude fits in your stack today. It's not about hype; it's about what we use every day and why nothing else comes close when the task gets hard.
I've been building with Claude since before Constitutional AI became mainstream, and I've watched it quietly become our most reliable tool across everything from custom FastAPI pipelines to production codebases. Yet most people still don't know what Claude actually is—which is exactly why I wrote this. This guide covers the current model family as of April 2026, explains what Agent Skills and Cowork actually do in practice, and shows you where Claude fits in your stack today. It's not about hype; it's about what we use every day and why nothing else comes close when the task gets hard.