Support persistent "max" effort level in settings.json
Resolved 💬 5 comments Opened Apr 18, 2026 by Ashkaan Closed Apr 19, 2026
Summary
The VSCode extension UI exposes five effort levels (low, medium, high, xhigh, max), but the effortLevel setting in ~/.claude/settings.json accepts only four — "max" is excluded from the schema enum, so it can't be persisted as a default. Users who pick "Max" in the UI get it for the current session only; every new tab starts at xhigh.
Repro
- Set
"effortLevel": "max"in~/.claude/settings.json. - Open a new Claude tab in VSCode on Opus 4.7.
- Observe: tab opens at "Extra high" (xhigh), not "Max". The setting is silently ignored.
Evidence (extension v2.1.114)
claude-code-settings.schema.json—effortLevelenum:["low","medium","high","xhigh"]webview/index.jsFN0 label map:{low:"Low", medium:"Medium", high:"High", xhigh:"Extra high", max:"Max"}— UI has "max"- No
CLAUDE_CODE_EFFORT_LEVELenv var exists to override
Requested change
Either:
- (a) add
"max"to theeffortLevelenum in the schema and CLI validation, or - (b) introduce a
defaultEffortLevelsetting that accepts all five UI values.
Use case
Max-plan subscriber on Opus 4.7 wants every new tab to start at Max without per-tab manual selection.
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