Effort Levels - Claude Code
Low, medium, high, xhigh, and max for adaptive reasoning control.
Effort levels tune how much reasoning Claude puts into each turn. Low is fast and cheap, max is slow and thorough, and there are three settings between.
What it does
Each level (low, medium, high, xhigh, max) adjusts the amount of internal reasoning before Claude commits to a response. Higher levels catch more edge cases and produce better plans on complex work. Lower levels ship faster and cost less for tasks where speed beats depth.
When to use it
lowfor trivial edits, one-line fixes, or rote tool calls.mediumfor normal day-to-day work.highorxhighfor architecture, tricky refactors, and debugging.maxfor the hardest problems where a wrong answer is costly.
Gotchas
- Higher effort means slower turns. Don't use max for everything.
- Effort scales tokens, which scales cost. Watch the spend on xhigh and max.
- Swapping mid-task can produce mixed quality. Pick a level for a session and stick with it unless a specific step needs more.
Official docs: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/model-config.md#adjust-effort-level
Technical content at the intersection of AI and development. Building with AI agents, Claude Code, and modern dev tools - then showing you exactly how it works.
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