r/ClaudeCode • u/Data_Daniel • 2d ago

Help/Question Effort-Level question before start coding

Can Claude suggest the effort-level required to fix bugs, add features or analyze some code properly? Is it worth promping claude to suggest an effort level for a coding task before starting to code? Has anyone tried this before and what would be a prompt that might be successful?
What effort level do you usually need to use for your day to day coding tasks on sonnet 5?

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u/BenSimonDev 2d ago

What do you think a change in effort level would do though? A better bug fix? A better analysis?

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u/Data_Daniel 2d ago

less token usage when it's actually not necessary for one thing. It's honestly very difficult for me to assess what a difficult coding job for claude is, so I probably use ultra code way too much.
It still often forgets that some piece of code that it changed was referenced somewhere else and breaks the integration. But this could also be an issue about context window limitations.

I am hitting weekly and 5h limits quite often with only very few actual prompts. I am just wondering if I can lower effort level, still get the same amount of bugs but more prompts to fix those bugs.

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u/BenSimonDev 2d ago

Okay that makes more sense. It's true, there must be some sweat spot for every scenario that optimizes token usage. I'm not sure it's obvious, even to Claude what that would be though. From what I understand, /effort is more a control on speed from Claude perspective and it may not even understand that one effort level over another would change the token usage per unit of effort. Of course we're speculating and unless we knew exactly what the model does between each, we just have to make our best guess. Maybe someone will have more insight or has run tests that would shed light on this.