Models, effort, and Fast Mode

Model configuration affects quality, speed, cost, and caching. With Passion8, verify the actual model ID, capability metadata, context window, effort, and Fast Mode support.

For advisor-assisted decisions, Agent View, goals, Ultraplan, and Ultrareview, see Advanced workflows.

#Model selection precedence

Resuming a session normally uses its saved model unless unavailable, excluded by policy, or explicitly overridden by the new launch's model selection.

#Common aliases

Use the actual Passion8 ID if the gateway uses custom names. For model discovery in the picker, see Gateway and protocol.

#opusplan

The tradeoff is split caches when the actual model changes.

1. Plan at the beginning with opusplan.
2. After approval, avoid repeatedly moving between planning and execution.
3. For an occasional second opinion, consider advisor instead of switching the whole session.

#Effort

Effort controls adaptive reasoning depth. Higher settings can cost more and take longer; supported levels and defaults depend on the model.

Set at launch:

claude --effort high

Or in-session:

/effort xhigh
/effort auto

Or in settings:

{
  "effortLevel": "high"
}

#Fast Mode

Fast Mode trades higher cost for lower latency on supported Opus configurations.

/fast

Fast Mode is a speed/billing setting; effort controls reasoning depth. They are not interchangeable.

#Advisor tool

The main model continues working while consulting another model on difficult decisions.

/advisor opus
/advisor off

At startup:

claude --advisor opus

#Fallback models

Configure a fallback chain for overload/unavailability:

claude --fallback-model sonnet,haiku

Or in settings:

{
  "fallbackModel": ["sonnet", "haiku"]
}

A fallback turn uses another model and therefore another cache. It improves availability rather than reducing cache cost.

#1M context

The official configuration supports [1m] aliases/suffixes on compatible models. Availability depends on model, account, provider, and gateway.

#Third-party capability declarations

Claude Code infers effort, thinking, tool search, and context capabilities from model IDs. Custom deployment names may need provider-specific declarations.

export ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL="my-opus-deployment"
export ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL_SUPPORTED_CAPABILITIES="effort,xhigh_effort,max_effort,thinking,adaptive_thinking,interleaved_thinking"

The official capability variables apply to supported provider configurations such as Bedrock, Vertex, Foundry, and Mantle. Do not assume the same behavior on every ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL gateway; full header/body forwarding remains essential.

#Passion8 recommendations

#Official references

• Model configuration
• Fast mode
• Advisor tool
• Prompt caching
• Gateway protocol reference