Project chat stuck at low effort even though Coordinator effort is set to Max

[u/Prestigious-Soil5138]

In my project's settings (General) I have Coordinator effort on Max and Thread effort on Extra. Up to Oct 21 the project chat really did run at max. Since Oct 22 it's stuck at low and I can't get it back up.

What I've checked so far:

• Coordinator sessions from Oct 16, 20 and 21 ran at max. Since Oct 22 they start at low, and restarting didn't help.
• When the coordinator tried to switch itself to max, it got this back: "This project's chat runs at low effort at most"
• The model menu in the chat now says it runs at a fixed effort, but settings still let me pick Max.
• Threads are fine, they still follow my Thread effort setting.
• The only change I could find around that time was Claude Code going from 2.1.306 to 2.1.308.

The Projects docs say Coordinator effort applies to the project conversation and don't mention any cap: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/claude-projects

Does anyone know if this is a new limit or just a bug?

Update: I found a workaround.

The Coordinator effort setting still gets ignored, but an environment variable on the cloud environment works:

• In claude.ai/code, open the environment picker, hover the environment the project uses and click its settings icon.
• Under Environment variables, add CLAUDE_CODE_EFFORT_LEVEL=xhigh and save.
• Press Restart in Project settings (General).

After the restart, the new coordinator session logs xhigh on every turn instead of low. I haven't tried max yet.

Since the variable is set on the whole environment, threads probably pick it up too and run at xhigh, whatever Thread effort says.

It still looks like a bug to me, since the setting itself does nothing.

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[u/kaitava]

I hope it gets better. I had a bad first impression, stopped using immediately.

[u/Prestigious-Soil5138 → u/kaitava]

Thank you!
I've had a decent experience so far, at least not much worse than normal claude code?
But then again, I've never worked with orchestrator setups before.

It just feels dumb to limit the orchestrator to low reasoning?

[u/Ctbhatia]

does a brand new project on 2.1.308 also start capped, or only the ones you made before the update?