/effort no longer starts on ultracode when you open it

/effort no longer starts on ultracode when you open it

The /effort picker no longer jumps to ultracode as its first selection when ultracode is on

You'll noticeTier: how much it should matter to you

2Useful: my rating, 1 to 5

1Signal: worth watching, 1 to 5

EffortArea: what it touches

Bug FixesKind: in v2.1.284, 28 Sep 26

Bug FixesSection of the release

What

The /effort picker no longer starts with "ultracode" selected when ultracode is on and the effort level is xhigh. The command now reads whether ultracode is on separately, and "ultracode" can be shown with a shimmer in its own colour.

Why

What the picker shows when you open it changes for people who use ultracode.

Read from

Names in the bundle/effort

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 doubtThe visible difference in the picker is not confirmed.

Anthropic's release notes agreeAdded effortSlider:decreaseEffort, increaseEffort and toggleUltracode keybinding actions, so the /effort slider's arrow and Tab keys can be…

See this entry in the whole of v2.1.284 →

The build it came inv2.1.284

28 Sep 2026 · 328 entries, this one is #205.

Use it now18
You'll notice199
Nothing to try yet25
Under the hood86

Either side of it

v2.1.283Older

Open the release →

Names in this entry

slash/effort
Set the effort level: low to xhigh, max, ultracode, or auto; status prints it. max and ultracode are session-only; the ultracode key persists. Run it while Claude is responding and, once you confirm the cache warning, if Claude Code shows one, Claude Code applies the new level to the next request in that turn. Before v2.1.242, Claude Code decided from a feature flag it fetched from Anthropic whether to run the command mid-turn or queue it until the turn finished, and always queued it in a session that doesn't fetch feature flags, such as on a third-party provider. Works in -p
settingxhigh
The bundled Claude API skill docs now target the new Opus, covering thinking defaults, fallbacks and fast mode.

Anthropic's notes

Upstream's own release notes for v2.1.284 name something this entry names, so the two are probably about the same change. Probably: the pairing is made on a shared name rather than on the words around it.

Added effortSlider:decreaseEffort, increaseEffort and toggleUltracode keybinding actions, so the /effort slider's arrow and Tab keys can be rebound in keybindings.json
Changed Ultracode into its own toggle in /effort (Tab, or /effort ultracode [on|off]): it no longer forces xhigh effort and stays on at any effort level

Is this right?