Default thinking level to xhigh

[sethkarten]

Summary

• Change the built-in default thinking level from medium to xhigh when no user or project setting overrides it.
• Document defaultThinkingLevel as defaulting to xhigh.
• Add a model resolver regression covering the built-in default.

Validation

• npx tsx ../../node_modules/vitest/dist/cli.js --run test/model-resolver.test.ts
• npm run check

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Note

Medium Risk
Default behavior change increases reasoning usage and cost for users who rely on implicit defaults; explicit settings and CLI overrides are unchanged.

Overview
Raises the built-in default thinking level from medium to xhigh when neither user nor project defaultThinkingLevel is set. The change is centralized in DEFAULT_THINKING_LEVEL in defaults.ts, which findInitialModel and model-switch paths already use as the fallback.

Docs and release notes now state that defaultThinkingLevel defaults to xhigh, including the settings example. A findInitialModel regression test asserts the built-in default is xhigh with no CLI or saved settings.

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit fa525b5. Bugbot is set up for automated code reviews on this repo. Configure here.}

Note

Default thinking level to xhigh in coding agent

Changes DEFAULT_THINKING_LEVEL in defaults.ts from "medium" to "xhigh". This affects all code paths that fall back to the built-in default when no user or project defaultThinkingLevel is configured. Risk: users with no explicit thinking level setting will now consume significantly more tokens per request.

^{Macroscope summarized fa525b5.}

[kevinjosethomas]

Seth and I discussed-- consensus was to not actually make this change.