Effort Levels
Effort settings pass a reasoning-effort value to an agent CLI that supports it. The selected model and provider determine which values are accepted; Forge does not validate or normalize the value.
Agent support
Forge currently passes effort values to these agent CLIs:
| Agent | CLI option | Notes |
|---|---|---|
github_copilot | --reasoning-effort | The agent CLI validates the value. |
claude_code | --effort | Accepted values depend on the selected model and Claude Code version. |
opencode | --variant | Values are provider-specific. |
For agents without an effort flag, including Gemini CLI, Forge ignores the configured effort and reports a non-fatal warning. It does not read or write the agent's own configuration files.
Configure effort
Set a default for an agent:
[agent.github_copilot]
effort = "medium"Override the default for a target:
[agent.github_copilot.targets]
issue = { effort = "high" }Override both for one operation:
[agent.github_copilot.operations]
"issue.plan" = { effort = "xhigh" }Forge resolves settings in this order:
- Operation setting, such as
"issue.plan". - Target setting, such as
issue. - Agent-level
effortdefault. - No effort option is passed; the agent uses its default.
Values and errors
Forge passes a configured value to the agent CLI unchanged, including values the CLI may reject. Check the documentation for the selected agent, model, and provider before choosing a value. A mistyped or unsupported value is reported by the agent CLI. Forge does not check whether the installed CLI version supports its effort option.
When an agent does not support an effort option, Forge warns that the setting is ignored and continues without it. Configure that behavior using the agent's own settings if it provides an equivalent feature.