What probably matters to youSection of the release
Unclear What secDefault itself configures is not stated in the finding.
What
A new managed-settings key, maxEffortLevel, lets an administrator restrict the maximum reasoning-effort level allowed.
The effective cap is computed by combining a top-level maxEffortLevel with any per-model modelSettings.<model>.maxEffortLevel overrides across all loaded settings files, taking the lowest applicable value.
Effort-level resolution (whether effort, max_effort, or xhigh_effort apply for a given model) now checks this new setting first, before falling back to the older logic based on the model's id.
Why
This lets organizations enforce a ceiling on how much reasoning effort, and therefore cost and latency, Claude Code can use, regardless of what an individual user or model requests.
The entry above is what we published on the day. These lines were added later, as Anthropic's own pages caught up, and they sit beside the original rather than replacing it.
Confirmed sinceAnthropic's documentation has since written up maxEffortLevel, on What's new.Also this week: pop any **Claude Code Desktop pane** out into its own window and dock it back later; the **`maxEffortLevel`** setting caps the effort level on every provider; and a page that **WebFetch** hasn't finished downloading within …whats-new/indexsee the edit
How sure we are
Something disagreesSomething we can check disagrees with this entry, or the writer said they could not settle it.
The writer flagged doubtWhat secDefault itself configures is not stated in the finding.
Anthropic's documentation agreesAnthropic's documentation has since written up maxEffortLevel, on What's new.
Anthropic's release notes agreeAdded maxEffortLevel setting (top-level or per model under modelSettings): caps the effort level on every provider, including Bedrock…
The name it cites is new in this buildNew in this build: maxEffortLevel
