effort
Effort is a setting that controls, in levels, how much reasoning an AI model applies when producing a response.
Effort is a setting in reasoning AI models that specifies, in levels, how much reasoning to apply when generating a response; higher levels generally consume more tokens and time. OpenAI offered it as "reasoning effort" in the API for its o-series models, and Anthropic provides an effort setting for Claude models. It differs from temperature, which adjusts randomness in the output.
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A file defines each one's description, tool permissions, sandbox policy and reasoning effort.
Opening a template exposes the agent's definition prompt, base model, output format, reasoning effort and verbosity.
Users face reasoning effort settings, multi-agent options, Ultra modes and standard models, and the choice wears them out.
On that task, Claude Opus 5.5 at a high effort setting produced an outstanding result, while Claude Sonnet 5.5 at a medium setting produced an adequate one.
The base model matters as much as the effort setting:
Its reported GPT-6.1 Sol results differ by reasoning effort, a setting that changes how much work the model devotes to a task:
The practical comparison is therefore about both accuracy and spending at the effort setting a team actually uses.
Published DeepSWE results put Luna at 66.6% with maximum reasoning effort, compared with 62.2% for GPT-5.6 Luna.
Its default effort setting has changed, so older instructions to think harder may add delay without helping.
The test paired Codex, powered by GPT-5.5 at extra-high reasoning effort, with Claude Code, powered by Claude Opus 4.8 at extra-high reasoning effort.
Given the same prompts at maximum reasoning effort, the newer model finished every compared scene sooner and generally produced stronger visuals.