Claude Code 2.1.94 Ships With Higher Default Effort and Agents-First Tool Calling

The latest Claude Code CLI update quietly changes how agents behave by default — they now call tools before responding, and the default effort level jumps from medium to high.

Anthropic pushed Claude Code version 2.1.94 on Tuesday with 25 CLI changes, as documented by @ClaudeCodeLog. Two changes stand out. First, agents now default to calling tools before generating text responses — a subtle but significant shift that prioritizes action over explanation. Second, the default effort level was bumped from medium to high, meaning agents will spend more compute per task out of the box.

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