[BUG] Desktop app: session opened from a spawn_task card starts at medium effort, ignoring effortLevel in settings.json and the parent session's effort
Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 0 comments · opened Oct 6, 2026
Description
In the Claude desktop app (Code tab), when Claude suggests a background task via a card (spawn_task chip) and I click it, the new local session always starts with effort medium.
My ~/.claude/settings.json has "effortLevel": "high", and the parent session that produced the card runs at high. Neither is applied to the session opened from the card.
Steps to reproduce
- Set
"effortLevel": "high"in~/.claude/settings.json. - Start a local session in the desktop app Code tab (it runs at high, as expected).
- Ask Claude to open a new session for a task, so it shows a task card.
- Click the card to start the session.
- Check the effort of the new session.
Expected
The new session uses the configured effortLevel (high), or at least inherits the parent session's effort.
Actual
The new session starts at medium. Effort has to be changed manually every time, and the first turn has already run at medium.
Environment
- Claude desktop app, Code tab, local session
- macOS (Darwin 27.0.0)
- Model: claude-opus-5-5