Reasoning effort cannot be configured in the subagent menu

Support Bug Reports
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

It is not possible to configure reasoning effort in the subagent menu in the drop-down list of models or elsewhere on the subagent card, except by entering it manually.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Create .cursor\agents\subagent_card.md
  2. Try selecting a model and its reasoning effort

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

2026-03-24_11-29-00.png
2026-03-24_11-29-00.png373×315 4.76 KB

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Version Information

Version: 2.7.0-pre.73.patch.0 (system setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 16907718d4de0de7dabae1485dedff4174e54720
Date: 2026-03-16T08:03:15.785Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Nightly
Electron: 39.8.1
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.1
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.22631

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

1 Like
3

Hey, thanks for the report. I see the screenshot with the model dropdown, you’re right, there’s no reasoning effort option there right now.

For now, you can set it manually in the subagent file frontmatter, like this:

---
model: gpt-5.3-codex-xhigh
---

The suffix -xhigh, -high, -medium, -low controls the reasoning effort.

I’ve passed this to the team as a UI improvement request to add a reasoning effort picker directly in the subagent card. Let me know if the manual workaround doesn’t work for you.