ok, just saying it outright: do not use Sonnet with max effort! at that point, you should probably be using Opus Sonnet is the model that balances quality/speed/cost so when you push it to max, it thinks a lot more... spends more time... and costs more. you start to lose what makes Sonnet useful! this is why we have default effort levels, and in Claude Code the default is medium. all the effort dials are still there for anyone that needs them for an edge case. but our recommendation for most is: don't touch that dial!