Claude API Reference Skill

Pricing (per 1M tokens)

Core API Endpoints

Required Headers

x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY
anthropic-version: 2023-06-01
content-type: application/json

2026 Beta Headers

Managed Agents (New — Public Beta)

Fully managed agent harness with sandbox, built-in tools, SSE streaming:

# Requires beta header: managed-agents-2026-04-01
agent = client.agents.create(
    model="claude-sonnet-4-6",
    instructions="You are a helpful assistant.",
    tools=["Read", "Write", "Bash"],
)

session = client.sessions.create(agent_id=agent.id)
response = client.sessions.messages.create(
    session_id=session.id,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Analyze this codebase"}],
)

Tool Use / Function Calling

message = client.messages.create(
    model="claude-sonnet-4-6",
    max_tokens=1024,
    tools=[{
        "name": "get_weather",
        "description": "Get the current weather in a given location",
        "input_schema": {
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {
                "location": {
                    "type": "string",
                    "description": "City and state, e.g. San Francisco, CA"
                }
            },
            "required": ["location"]
        }
    }],
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "What's the weather in Taipei?"}]
)

Tool Helpers (Beta — New in SDK 0.87.0)

Type-safe input validation + automatic tool runner:

# SDK now provides helpers for type-safe tool execution
# See anthropic SDK docs for tool_helpers module

Server-side Tools (New)

Skills that run on Anthropic servers: Excel, PowerPoint, Word, PDF generation.

File Handling

PDF Processing

import base64

with open("document.pdf", "rb") as f:
    pdf_data = base64.standard_b64encode(f.read()).decode("utf-8")

message = client.messages.create(
    model="claude-sonnet-4-6",
    max_tokens=4096,
    messages=[{
        "role": "user",
        "content": [
            {
                "type": "document",
                "source": {
                    "type": "base64",
                    "media_type": "application/pdf",
                    "data": pdf_data
                }
            },
            {"type": "text", "text": "Analyze the key points of this document"}
        ]
    }]
)

Image Processing

# Base64 method
{
    "type": "image",
    "source": {
        "type": "base64",
        "media_type": "image/png",  # image/jpeg, image/gif, image/webp
        "data": image_base64
    }
}

# URL method
{
    "type": "image",
    "source": {
        "type": "url",
        "url": "https://example.com/image.jpg"
    }
}

Streaming

with client.messages.stream(
    model="claude-sonnet-4-6",
    max_tokens=1024,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Write a story"}]
) as stream:
    for text in stream.text_stream:
        print(text, end="", flush=True)

Batch Processing (50% Discount)

batch = client.messages.batches.create(
    requests=[
        {
            "custom_id": "request-1",
            "params": {
                "model": "claude-sonnet-4-6",
                "max_tokens": 1024,
                "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
            }
        }
    ]
)

Limits

Extended Thinking

message = client.messages.create(
    model="claude-opus-4-6",
    max_tokens=16384,
    thinking={
        "type": "enabled",
        "budget_tokens": 10000
    },
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Solve this complex problem..."}]
)

Official Resources

• Documentation: https://docs.anthropic.com
• Python SDK: https://github.com/anthropics/anthropic-sdk-python
• Cookbook: https://github.com/anthropics/anthropic-cookbook
• Quickstarts: https://github.com/anthropics/anthropic-quickstarts
• Agent SDK: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-agent-sdk-python

Detailed References

• PDF/Image processing: references/file_handling.md
• Tool Use: references/tool_use.md
• Advanced features: references/advanced_features.md

Version History

• 2026-04-11: Updated to SDK 0.87.0, added Opus/Sonnet 4.6, Managed Agents, Skills API
• 2026-01-09: Initial reference with Claude 4.5 models