Effortless

Website · Install · What it shows · Judges

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/9b5af48e-2ad8-4826-9443-4aeea1306664

A Claude Code mod that picks the reasoning effort for every prompt. Quick questions get Low, hard jobs get High, and you never touch the Effort control. On real coding tasks it cut the cost of Opus by 21% against Anthropic's recommended medium, 29% against high and 42% against xhigh, with every answer still right (the benchmark). One bar above the prompt also shows how full the chat is, how long the prompt cache stays warm, and hands off or compacts in one click when a chat gets heavy.

Powered by Haiku 5.5

Haiku 5.5 costs about 75% less than Haiku 4.5, and Anthropic names compaction and quick, well-defined work among what it is built for. effortless uses it in three places:

The judge	reads each prompt and picks the effort, in about a second, on your own Claude login
Cheaper model when it can	experimental, off by default. When on, a prompt the judge calls simple may run on Haiku 5.5 (or Sonnet), never above your chat's model, but only when the switch pays: each model keeps its own prompt cache, so in a chat that is in use the switch usually costs more than it saves (why)
Compaction	every compaction, /compact and the automatic one included, is summarized by Haiku 5.5. If Haiku fails, Claude Code compacts as usual

The cheaper model is switched on in Settings → Model; compaction is switched in Settings → Handoff → Compact with.

Install

Two ways. Both take a minute and need no terminal.

1. Ask Claude (easiest). Paste this into Claude Code and press Enter:

Install the effortless plugin for me: run `claude plugin marketplace add HeyCubit/effortless` and then `claude plugin install effortless@effortless`. When both succeed, tell me to run /reload-plugins.

2. Commands. Type these two lines in Claude Code's chat box:

/plugin marketplace add HeyCubit/effortless

/plugin install effortless@effortless

Or in a terminal, in one line:

claude plugin marketplace add HeyCubit/effortless; claude plugin install effortless@effortless

Then run /reload-plugins (or restart Claude Code). A short setup opens above the prompt: keep Haiku alone (one click, no key, runs on your own Claude login) or add Jev (a TypeSafe key, about 4x faster effort calls), lean cheaper or smarter, and pick how handoffs are written. Run /effortless setup to go through it again, or change any of it in ⚙.

Updates come to you: when a new version is out, a card above the prompt offers Update or Later. Update loads the new version in the chat you pressed it in, with nothing to type.

What the bar shows