01 / The Model
Effort
A dial for how long the model thinks before answering. More thinking costs more and takes longer, and pays for itself on genuinely hard problems. Wasted on simple ones.
How you’ll hear it
“Should we turn the thinking up?”
“For the contract review, yes. For sorting emails, it just costs more.”
Avoid
Leaving maximum effort on for everything.
The longer version
Many models can spend extra time reasoning before they answer. More effort improves results on hard, multi-step problems and adds cost and delay. The skill is matching effort to the task rather than leaving it at the top.