LightEffort changes Claude Code’s effort level with one hotkey (Ctrl+Alt+1 to Ctrl+Alt+5).
Claude Code has five effort levels: low, medium, high, xhigh and max. They decide how hard the model thinks before it answers. Low is cheap and fast and fine for renaming a variable. Max is for the design of a subsystem you will live with for years.
So I switch between them all day. And every switch means typing /effort xhigh, pressing Enter, and then answering a little confirmation question. Not amusing.
What it does
It sits in the tray and owns five hotkeys:
- Ctrl+Alt+1 – low
- Ctrl+Alt+2 – medium
- Ctrl+Alt+3 – high
- Ctrl+Alt+4 – xhigh
- Ctrl+Alt+5 – max
Press one while a terminal running Claude Code has the keyboard focus. LightEffort opens Claude Code’s model picker (Alt+P), moves the effort level with the arrow keys, and applies it to the current session only. The text you were typing in the prompt is not touched.
It also gives the keys back. While the focused window is not a terminal, Ctrl+Alt+1 to Ctrl+Alt+5 belong to whatever program you are using – Total Commander, your editor, anything. LightEffort takes them again the moment a terminal comes to the front. This matters more than it sounds: RegisterHotKey, the Windows call behind a system-wide hotkey, has no “only while window X has focus” option, so the taking and giving back has to be done by hand, five times a second.
Does changing the effort costs you?
Yes, it can cost you tokens, depending on which LLM you are and what you are chaining (LLM/effort). I did some extensive research to see when it costs tokens and how much exactly.
Details will be published soon in my 5th Delphi book.
Download
Download LightEffort v2.1.1 – Free. No installer. Signed exe.
Good to know
A press takes about 0.3 seconds. Version 2.0 typed /effort into the prompt and needed 2.7 seconds. Version 2.1 goes through the model picker instead. Promise kept.
While Claude is asking you a permission question, the picker cannot open. LightEffort gives up after 3 seconds and beeps.
Needs Windows Terminal and Claude Code 2.1.257 or later. The terminal window must be at least 40 rows tall, or the model picker does not fit on screen. Windows Terminal opens new windows 30 rows tall; to change that, add "initialRows": 45, to its settings.json.
Programs for AI
The program uses my own LightSaber library for the application skeleton – the form that saves its own position, the INI handling, the logging, the single-instance check.
If you want to see how a Windows program that drives another program is put together, that whole style of code is what my books are about, and Book 5 in particular is about working with AI assistants in Delphi.