Claude Code’s Max Effort Cost Me 8x More. It Wrote the Same Code

说明与用途

Claude Code 的更高努力级别会增加成本、时间和输出令牌，但不会提升代码正确性。它们生成更具防御性、模块化的代码，增加了审查负担。

问题

Assess whether higher effort settings in Claude Code improve code quality, correctness, or efficiency for software development tasks.

结果

Higher effort settings in Claude Code increase cost, time, and output tokens but do not improve correctness or test pass rates. They produce more defensive, factored code and self-checks, which may be desirable in some contexts but add review overhead.

工作流

• 1. Set up a headless Claude Code process per effort level, each in its own project copy. 2. Run the same prompt for each level, capturing stream-json logs. 3. Parse logs for turns, tool calls, cost, tokens, and hidden test results. 4. Repeat for three distinct tasks (Python implementation, Go port, bug hunt without execution).
• 5. Compare metrics: turns, wall time, cost, output tokens, hidden test pass rates, code quality checks (gofmt, go vet).
• 6. Analyze code differences manually to assess defensive coding and spec fidelity.
• 7. Summarize findings on effort impact.
• 8. Draw conclusions on when effort settings matter.
• 9. Document cost and time trade-offs.
• 10. Provide actionable guidance on using effort settings effectively.

证据

Every level got the same score on every task. Only the clock and the invoice moved.

来源

Higher effort spent its budget on self-checks and defensive code.

来源

The total bill for this experiment was about $20.

来源