[BUG] effort: frontmatter silently ignored in commands/*.md slash commands (works in skills/SKILL.md)
Summary
The effort: frontmatter field is honored for skills/<name>/SKILL.md (and agents) but silently ignored for slash commands defined under commands/<name>.md. Both define /<name>, so the inconsistency is surprising — and effort: is not documented for either path.
Environment
Claude Code v2.1.154 · Opus 4.8 (defaults to high effort) · Windows 11
Repro
- Create
~/.claude/commands/changelog.md:
``yaml``
---
description: "Generate release notes from git log"
keep-coding-instructions: true
effort: medium
---
...
- Start a fresh session and run
/changelogin a git repo. - Observed: the command runs at high effort. Expected: medium.
Evidence (it's real behavior, not just a status-bar display glitch)
- The live process indicator showed
still thinking with high effortfor 16s+ (~36s total, ~1.4k thinking tokens) — i.e. the model actually reasoned at high effort, not merely a wrong label. - The same
effort:field does work inskills/<name>/SKILL.md(verified with one skill ateffort: highand another ateffort: medium). - The CHANGELOG only ever mentions "effort level applied by skill/agent
effort:frontmatter" — never "command". - The official slash-commands frontmatter reference does not list
effortat all (onlyname,description,disable-model-invocation,allowed-tools,arguments).
Workaround
Manually run /effort medium before invoking and /effort high after. Works, but defeats per-command automation (the whole point of the frontmatter field).
Ask
Either:
- (a) honor
effort:incommands/*.mdthe same wayskills/SKILL.mddoes, or - (b) if the legacy
commands/format intentionally does not support it, document that explicitly (and documenteffort:forskills/SKILL.md, since it isn't listed in the frontmatter reference today).
A load-time warning for an unrecognized/ignored frontmatter field would also make this much easier to diagnose — right now it fails silently.
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