Effort — skyl

Effort is a hint about how much reasoning the model should spend. Providers interpret it differently and some ignore it entirely.

Reference#

type Effort string

Constant	Value
`EffortLow`	low
`EffortMedium`	medium
`EffortHigh`	high
`EffortMax`	max

They are listed in increasing order. Set one on Thinking.Effort.

Caveats

It is a hint. Adapters map it onto whatever the provider offers and ignore it where there is no equivalent.
Anthropic ignores it entirely — its adaptive thinking config has no effort or budget field.
OpenAI does not define max. skyl sends it literally, so expect a 400.
Gemini maps each level onto a concrete token budget: 1024, 8192, 16384, 24576.
skyl does not validate the value, so an unknown effort string reaches the provider.

Usage#

Setting a level

goCompiles

req.Thinking = &skyl.Thinking{Enabled: true, Effort: skyl.EffortMedium}

req.Thinking = &skyl.Thinking{Enabled: true, Effort: skyl.EffortMedium}

Avoiding the undefined max on OpenAI

goCompiles

effort := skyl.EffortMax
if provider == "openai" || provider == "openai-compatible" {
	effort = skyl.EffortHigh // "max" is not a value OpenAI defines
}
req.Thinking = &skyl.Thinking{Enabled: true, Effort: effort}

effort := skyl.EffortMax
if provider == "openai" || provider == "openai-compatible" {
	effort = skyl.EffortHigh // "max" is not a value OpenAI defines
}
req.Thinking = &skyl.Thinking{Enabled: true, Effort: effort}

Troubleshooting#

A 400 mentioning reasoning_effort

You sent EffortMax to OpenAI. It is not one of their defined values; use EffortHigh.

Changing the effort changed nothing

On Anthropic it is dropped. Reach the budget with ProviderOptions: {"thinking.budget_tokens": N}, which works only there.