[BUG] Remote Control: model / effort / permission-mode changes appear to apply but never reach the paired desktop session

What's Wrong?

When controlling a Claude Code desktop-app session from the mobile Remote Control, changing the model, the effort level, or the auto/permission mode appears to succeed — the picker accepts and displays the new value — but the change is never applied to the session running in the desktop app. Returning to the desktop later shows the model never changed. There is also no reliable way to see from Remote Control which model/effort/mode the desktop session is actually using. Broken for at least several weeks (observed across July–August 2026).

Impact: sessions silently run on a different model (and cost/effort profile) than the user believes they selected — e.g. a full session believed to be on one model turned out to have run on another, discovered only later at the desktop.

What Should Happen?

• A model/effort/mode change made in Remote Control should apply to the live desktop session, or fail loudly.
• Remote Control should display the session's actual current model/effort/mode.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Start a session in the desktop app.
2. Open it in Remote Control on the phone.
3. Change the model (or effort, or auto mode) from the Remote Control menu — it appears to accept.
4. Later, at the desktop app, check the session's model: unchanged.

Environment

Claude Code desktop app on Windows 11, controlled from the Android mobile app.

Related

#79363 — same selector surface; that report is about the effort default reverting, this one is about changes silently not reaching the desktop session at all.