Claude Code recently downgraded the default thinking level to “medium”, so it’s worth checking your settings.
Doh.
But how do you see the current thinking level and how do you change it? I’ve been clicking around and searching and adding “effortLevel”:”high” to .claude/settings.json but no idea if this actually has any effect etc.
$ echo 'export ANTHROPIC_EFFORT="high"' >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc
$ echo 'export ANTHROPIC_EFFORT="high"' >> ~/.bashrc source ~/.bashrc
"claudeCode.environmentVariables": [
{ "name": "ANTHROPIC_MODEL", "value": "claude-opus-4-6" },
{ "name": "CLAUDE_CODE_EFFORT_LEVEL", "value": "high" }
], ...