The word "harder" creates invalid thinking budget configuration
Resolved 💬 4 comments Opened Nov 7, 2025 by bukzor Closed Nov 7, 2025
Bug Description
The word "harder" in user messages triggers a conversation-level thinking budget (budget:thinking_budget: 10000) regardless of what other thinking settings are active. This creates mathematically invalid configurations whenever the per-turn limit exceeds 10000 tokens.
Root Cause
"harder" is a text trigger that always sets budget:thinking_budget: 10000, independent of:
- Whether "ultrathink" (60000 per-turn) is active
- Whether tab-complete thinking mode (31999 per-turn) is active
- Any other per-turn limit settings
Broken Configurations
Any message containing "harder" + any high thinking limit setting:
- "ultrathink" (60k per-turn) + "harder" anywhere → 10k budget (6x exceeded in one turn)
- Tab-complete thinking mode (32k per-turn) + "harder" anywhere → 10k budget (3x exceeded in one turn)
Steps to Reproduce
- Enable ultrathink (sets 60000 per-turn limit)
- In a later message, type "harder" (even without "think")
- Observe system prompt has both
thinking_length_limit: 60000ANDbudget:thinking_budget: 10000
Expected Behavior
Either:
- "harder" should scale the budget based on per-turn limits
- "harder" should be rejected when per-turn limits exceed the budget
- Text triggers shouldn't control budget configuration at all
Actual Behavior
The word "harder" creates a hardcoded 10000-token conversation budget that conflicts with any high per-turn setting.
Impact
Users cannot discuss things being "harder" while using extended thinking modes without creating broken configurations.
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