Pattern: The 'Effort Dial' Is Replacing Named Agent Modes as the Standard Control Surface

MCP.Directory·medium signal

Amp collapsed four named modes (smart/deep/rush/large) into a single low→ultra effort dial that also binds reasoning strength and model tier to the setting, echoing Claude Code's own effort-level control. Named modes forced users to learn a tool's private vocabulary; a monotonic difficulty knob maps directly to the cost/quality tradeoff developers actually reason about. Watch for more tools to converge on a single 'how hard should this try' slider that pulls model, reasoning budget, and review depth together.