DeepMode Toggle
Per-project deep thinking toggle — fix Claude Code's shallow reasoning without affecting other open workspaces
Review the source code before installing. Scripts can execute arbitrary commands on your system.
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sv install dbz-max/deepmode
Requires the sv CLI. Installs to ~/.claude/skills/deepmode/.
.cursor/skills/deepmode/SKILL.md
Download and place the SKILL.md file into your .cursor/skills/deepmode/ directory.
curl -sL https://skillvault.md/api/packages/dbz-max/deepmode/download -o deepmode.zip
Downloads the package as a zip archive to your current directory.
https://skillvault.md/api/packages/dbz-max/deepmode/download
Download the zip, extract, and copy the relevant files into your project.
In Feb-March 2026, three changes to Claude Code caused the model to under-allocate reasoning on complex tasks: adaptive thinking (the model decides its own thinking budget, and often picks too little), a default effort level drop from high to medium, and system prompt brevity bias. The community identified and documented fixes through the Claude Code Prompt Patcher gist (239 stars), independent testing by Jonathan Hawkins, and GitHub Issue #34171.
The fix is two environment variables:
- CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_ADAPTIVE_THINKING=1 — forces a fixed thinking budget instead of letting the model decide
- MAX_THINKING_TOKENS=50000 — sets that budget to ~35k words of internal reasoning per turn
The problem with applying these globally: if you have multiple projects open in VS Code simultaneously, a global setting slows every single one of them down — including quick CSS edits and simple questions running in other windows.
deepmode solves this with a per-project toggle:
/deepmode on — writes both env vars to the current project's .claude/settings.local.json (gitignored by default). Only that project's new sessions use deep thinking. Other open projects are unaffected.
/deepmode off — removes them from the project-local file, and also clears global settings if they were accidentally set there.
/deepmode — checks three states: current live session, this project's local setting, and global setting.
If you genuinely want deep mode everywhere: /deepmode on global
How it works: a deterministic bash script (deep-toggle.sh) detects the project root via git rev-parse, creates .claude/settings.local.json if needed, backs it up, uses jq to surgically add/remove the env vars, writes to a temp file, validates JSON, then atomically replaces the original. If validation fails, the original is untouched.
Changes take effect on the next Claude Code session for that project — in VS Code that means opening a new chat panel.
Cost note: deep mode increases thinking token usage significantly per turn, including for subagents. A session spawning multiple parallel agents could use 10-20x normal thinking tokens. Worth it for high-stakes work — just be deliberate about when you turn it on for each project.
Requires: jq (brew install jq on macOS).
Based on community research from roman01la's Prompt Patcher gist, Jonathan Hawkins' environment variable findings, and GitHub Issue #34171.
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