What probably matters to youSection of the release
Unclear Which effort levels the variable accepts, other than inherit, is not stated.
What
Subagents are helper agents Claude starts to handle part of a task. Effort is how much reasoning the model puts into its work. Before, a subagent took the session's effort unless its own definition set one.
Any other value Claude Code does not recognise is recorded as an unknown level.
The documentation for Workflow scripts now says opts.effort defaults to the configured subagent default when this is set, instead of the session's effort. The variable can also be set through the environment section of Claude Code's settings, like CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL_FORCE.
Why
One variable can now limit how much reasoning, and so how much cost, all your subagents use.