Default Effort to high

For most development work, start with high.

There is rarely a reason to go higher unless the task is unusually difficult and Claude has already struggled.

Effort	When to use
Low / Medium	Simple tasks where speed matters most.
High	Default for nearly all development work.
Very High / Max / xhigh	Rare exception for extremely difficult reasoning tasks.

Practical advice

1. Start with high.
2. Review the result.
3. Increase effort only if the problem is genuinely hard or the first attempt exposed reasoning gaps.