Claude Code tiered effort setup: low for routine, xhigh for decisions

delost @thedelostOriginally posted 2026.10.17

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THIS IS STRAIGHT F*CKING GOLD Anthropic just shared one of the best tricks for Claude Code. The idea: one knob with five settings, and almost nobody ever moves it. Every routine turn runs at the same effort as your hardest decision, and you pay for thinking you never read. You just start Claude Code like this: claude --model opus --effort low here's the split: → low runs the routine turns, renames, imports, fixtures, formatting → /effort xhigh the moment an actual decision shows up → every subagent carries its own effort line in its frontmatter → you stop paying Opus 5.5 to think about which file to open you only climb the ladder at three moments: → before a plan that touches a lot of files → when the same bug survives two fixes → before a release you cannot roll back Low for the routine. High for the fork. Max for the rescue. JEV engineering is the same move one layer down: the forks that need no thinker (which file, which tool, retry or stop) go to JEV in milliseconds with zero thinking tokens, and the big models only see the ones that split the full tree > Opus 5.5 runs the main session at low effort > /effort xhigh the moment a real decision shows up, then back down > search runs on Haiku 5.5 with effort: low in its frontmatter > review runs on Sonnet 5.5 with effort: high in its frontmatter > every skill carries its own effort line, so the level follows the task > JEV routes micro-forks in milliseconds and thinks about none of them paste the tree and this prompt into Claude Code ↓ "Rebuild my Claude Code setup around this tree: 1. Run the main session on Opus 5.5 at low effort. 2. Set effort: low on every read-only subagent and effort: high on the review subagent. 3. Add one rule to CLAUDE.md: stay at low, climb to xhigh only before a multi-file plan, after the same error twice, and before an irreversible change, then drop back. 4. Route fast deterministic forks (tool choice, path selection, retries) through JEV. Show me every change as a diff first. No edits until I say go" ↳ http://code.claude.com/docs/en/model-config save it, it'll come in handy.

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