GitHub Copilot Adds Claude Opus 4.6 Across All Major IDEs

Iris Coleman Feb 19, 2026 18:37

Anthropic's flagship AI model Claude Opus 4.6 now available in Visual Studio, JetBrains, Xcode, and Eclipse through GitHub Copilot's chat interface.

GitHub Copilot Adds Claude Opus 4.6 Across All Major IDEs

GitHub has expanded Claude Opus 4.6 availability across its entire Copilot ecosystem, bringing Anthropic's flagship AI model to Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode, and Eclipse as of February 18, 2026. The integration covers all paid Copilot tiers—Enterprise, Business, Pro, and Pro+.

The rollout comes just two weeks after Anthropic launched Opus 4.6 on February 5. Developers can now access the model through GitHub Copilot Chat on github.com, GitHub Mobile, and Visual Studio Code, with the new IDE additions rounding out cross-platform coverage.

What Opus 4.6 Brings to the Table

The model represents a substantial upgrade for coding assistance. Opus 4.6 scored 65.4% on Terminal-Bench 2.0 and 90.2% on BigLaw Bench, showing particular strength in agentic task execution and planning. Its 1 million token context window (currently in beta) and 128K max output tokens give developers significantly more room to work with large codebases.

A key feature called "Adaptive Thinking" replaces the previous extended thinking mode. Instead of fixed reasoning depth, the model now adjusts its analytical intensity based on contextual cues—potentially faster responses for simple queries, deeper analysis when complexity warrants it.

Enterprise Rollout Details

Business and Enterprise customers won't see the option automatically. Administrators must manually enable the Claude Opus 4.6 policy in Copilot settings before users can select it from the model picker. The model works across agent, ask, and edit modes in the chat interface.

API pricing for Opus 4.6 runs $5.00 per million input tokens and $25.00 per million output tokens—unchanged from Opus 4.5's base rate. However, requests using the full 1M token context window carry a premium.

Broader AI Integration Trend

GitHub's rapid adoption of Opus 4.6 reflects the accelerating competition among AI coding assistants. Anthropic has simultaneously pushed into enterprise productivity with "Claude in PowerPoint" following its earlier Excel integration, suggesting a strategy to embed Claude across the entire developer and business workflow.

For teams evaluating AI coding tools, the multi-IDE availability removes a significant friction point. Whether you're in Microsoft's ecosystem, JetBrains, or Apple's development environment, the same model is now accessible through a unified interface.

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