The current Claude models give you an effort knob with five settings: low , medium , high , xhigh , max . The docs tell you what each is for. I wanted numbers, so I ran the same three real tasks across all five levels and measured tokens, latency, and quality. The results changed how I set effort, and one of them surprised me. Here is the data and what I do with it now. What effort controls Effort is not just "how much the model thinks." It controls overall token spend: ho...