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fix(anthropic): clamp budget thinking to the model's real output maximum - #6355

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vadymhimself:fix/anthropic-budget-thinking-model-ceiling
Oct 1, 2026
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vadymhimself:fix/anthropic-budget-thinking-model-ceiling

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@vadymhimself vadymhimself commented Oct 1, 2026 •

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Summary

Follow-up to #6329, where the per-model Anthropic output maxima landed. The reviewer noted there that the old thinking path still carries a flat clamp; this is that clamp.

The budget-thinking branch sized max_tokens with a flat REASONING_MAX_TOKENS_CEILING of 32000, so a caller asking for 128000 on Opus 4.6 or Sonnet 4.6 silently received 32000 — a quarter of what those models document. The adaptive branch immediately above already honours an explicit caller limit above 32k (adaptive-thinking model preserves explicit maxOutputTokens above the default ceiling); this branch overrode it.

The constant dates from Claude 4.x models that really did stop near 32k. It is no longer a safe ceiling for the families that still take this path: usesAdaptiveThinking routes sonnet >= 5, opus >= 4.7 and fable to the adaptive branch, leaving exactly claude-opus-4-6, claude-sonnet-4-6 and claude-haiku-4-5 here — 128K, 128K and 64K respectively, all above 32000.

It now clamps to configuredMaxOut, the per-model value already resolved ~70 lines above for the omitted-limit default (modelMaxOutputTokens falling back to defaultMaxOutputTokens), so this reuses that lookup instead of adding a second one. REASONING_MAX_TOKENS_CEILING stays the fallback when the provider states no ceiling, which preserves today's behaviour for an unconfigured provider.

Measured through buildRequest, provider carrying the seeded maxima:

model caller asked before after
claude-opus-4-6 128000 32000 128000
claude-sonnet-4-6 128000 32000 128000
claude-haiku-4-5 128000 32000 64000 (its real maximum)
claude-opus-4-6 10000 24576 24576 (budget+headroom, unchanged)
claude-opus-4-6, no configured maxima 128000 32000 32000 (fallback preserved)

Anthropic's max_tokens > thinking.budget_tokens invariant holds in every case; the test asserts it alongside the figures rather than trusting the arithmetic.

Verification

  • bun run typecheck — clean.
  • bun test tests/adapters/anthropic/anthropic-reasoning.test.ts — 73/73.
  • Red/green: the new case fails Expected: 128000, Received: 32000 without the source change.
  • bun test tests/adapters/anthropic — 654 pass / 30 fail before and after, identical set. Those 30 are pre-existing account-pause/pacing failures on dev and unrelated to max_tokens.
  • Rebased onto dev at 64294638a; the fix(anthropic): give each Claude model its real 128K output maximum #6329 commit dropped as already upstream.
  • No layout or file-size-baseline change: the test goes into the existing anthropic-reasoning.test.ts, and neither that file nor src/adapters/anthropic.ts is tracked in tests/fixtures/file-size-baseline.json.

Full-suite validation was not run locally; the focused adapter set above plus typecheck is what I exercised, with remaining coverage left to CI.

I could not exercise Opus 4.6 or Sonnet 4.6 live, so the 128K figures are from Anthropic's model pages rather than an observed upstream response. The behavioural claims above are all measured at the adapter boundary.

Checklist

  • Scope stays focused and avoids unrelated cleanup.
  • Docs or release notes were updated when needed. (No user-facing doc change: this aligns an internal clamp with the vendor limits already documented in the registry.)
  • Security-sensitive changes were reviewed for secrets, auth, and unsafe defaults. (No auth, credential, workflow or dependency surface; one arithmetic clamp and a test. It raises the output allowance a request may ask for, bounded by the model's documented maximum and still overridable by an explicit lower caller limit.)

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  • Required local validation passed; commands, results, and any full-suite exception are documented.

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  • My PR is ready for review.

Summary by CodeRabbit

  • Bug Fixes
    • Anthropic reasoning requests now support larger output limits when the selected model has a higher configured maximum, while remaining capped at that model’s limit.
    • Low configured output limits no longer reduce the reasoning ceiling below 32,000 tokens. The requested limit and reasoning budget still determine the final output allowance, and requests without a configured model maximum retain the 32,000-token fallback.

The budget-thinking branch sized `max_tokens` with a flat
REASONING_MAX_TOKENS_CEILING of 32000, so a caller asking for 128000 on Opus 4.6
or Sonnet 4.6 silently got 32000 — a quarter of what those models document. The
adaptive branch directly above already honours an explicit caller limit above
32k; this one overrode it.

The constant dates from Claude 4.x models that really stopped near 32k. Opus 4.6
and Sonnet 4.6 document 128K synchronous output and Haiku 4.5 documents 64K, so
the flat value is no longer a safe ceiling for the families that take this path:
`usesAdaptiveThinking` sends sonnet >= 5, opus >= 4.7 and fable down the adaptive
branch, leaving exactly opus-4-6, sonnet-4-6 and haiku-4-5 here, and all three
exceed 32000.

It now clamps to `configuredMaxOut`, the per-model value already resolved a few
lines above for the omitted-limit default (`modelMaxOutputTokens` falling back to
`defaultMaxOutputTokens`), so this reuses that lookup rather than adding a second
one. REASONING_MAX_TOKENS_CEILING stays the fallback for a target whose ceiling
is unknown, which keeps today's behaviour for an unconfigured provider.

Measured before and after, with the provider carrying the seeded maxima:

  opus-4-6    asked 128000 -> 32000 before, 128000 after
  sonnet-4-6  asked 128000 -> 32000 before, 128000 after
  haiku-4-5   asked 128000 -> 32000 before,  64000 after (its real maximum)
  opus-4-6    asked  10000 -> 24576 both (budget+headroom, unchanged)
  no maxima   asked 128000 -> 32000 both (fallback preserved)

Anthropic's invariant `max_tokens > thinking.budget_tokens` holds in every case
above; the test asserts it alongside the figures.

Follow-up to lidge-jun#6329, where the per-model maxima landed and the reviewer noted this
clamp as still outstanding.

Verification: `bun run typecheck` clean; 73/73 in
tests/adapters/anthropic/anthropic-reasoning.test.ts. The new case fails with
"Expected: 128000, Received: 32000" without the source change. tests/adapters/anthropic
reports the same 654 pass / 30 fail with and without it — those are pre-existing
account-pause/pacing failures on dev, unrelated to max_tokens.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Code <noreply@anthropic.com>
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✅ Deterministic PR hygiene checks passed.

@github-actions github-actions Bot added the bug Something isn't working label Oct 1, 2026
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✅ READY

  • all PR quality gates passed; the review readiness checklist is complete.

Review readiness checklist

  • ✅ Required local validation passed; commands, results, and any full-suite exception are documented.
  • ✅ I pushed my PR to a recent dev commit (at most 10 behind; a maintainer may still ask for the exact tip before merge).
  • ✅ I resolved all correct Codex and CodeRabbit findings.
  • ✅ My PR is ready for review.

✅ 4/4 boxes ticked.

This pull request is already Ready for Review.
The review-ready label marks this PR as ready; review automation runs independently.
Maintainers: @lidge-jun @Ingwannu

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github-actions Bot marked this pull request as draft October 1, 2026 04:59
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🧰 Additional context used
📚 Code guidelines (1)
src/AGENTS.md — auto-discovered

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  • src/adapters/anthropic.ts
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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Non-adaptive Anthropic reasoning requests now use a valid configured model output ceiling when available, with a 32,000-token fallback. Regression tests cover model-specific ceilings, requested output limits, and reasoning headroom.

Changes

Anthropic reasoning output limits

Layer / File(s) Summary
Configured output ceiling and regression coverage
src/adapters/anthropic.ts, tests/adapters/anthropic/anthropic-reasoning.test.ts
The adapter uses a positive configured model ceiling or falls back to 32,000 tokens. Tests cover model-specific maxima, lower explicit limits, reasoning headroom, and fallback behavior.

Priority: ⬇️ Low

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Change: Bug fix

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to 3f94e

The change preserves existing reasoning capacity for low defaults and supports larger configured model limits. No actionable merge-blocking risk remains on the supplied evidence, subject to normal CI checks.

Security Architecture Review

Security architecture risk: 🟡 Moderate · up to 0459e

Larger responses can be sent without reserving their output against configured spending limits. This increases potential overruns, particularly for concurrent requests or responses that end without usage data.

Retained concerns

  • Medium · security · inferred: Omitting the caller output limit leaves zero output tokens reserved while the changed reasoning path can permit 64,000 or 128,000 output tokens instead of 32,000. This worsens existing spend under-reservation: overlapping requests can be admitted against understated projected totals, and missing terminal usage or restart recovery cannot recover the unreserved output allowance.
Security review details

Security Blast Radius

  • inferred — The affected resource boundary is spend containment for callers admitted to an affected route. Reservations attach provider-pool scope and, when available, workflow-root and account-identity scopes. Potential overruns affect those applicable budgets and upstream usage; deployment-wide exposure and unauthenticated reachability were not established.

Security Findings and Attack Paths

  • inferred — A caller can omit the output limit on an affected reasoning request, leaving output unreserved while the configured outgoing allowance is larger. Overlapping work can exceed a configured spend ceiling before settlement catches up. This is a worsened pre-existing enforcement gap, not evidence of new credential authority or a demonstrated billing loss.

Trust Boundaries and Controls

  • observed — The ledger rejects duplicate send identifiers, checks all applicable spend scopes before reserving, and requires durable reservation before admission under configured limits. These controls operate on the supplied token amount; they do not derive the omitted output allowance from provider configuration.

Resilience and Maintainability Implications

  • observed — The tracker distinguishes refunds from settlement, makes repeated settlement idempotent, and marks unreported sends as lost. Journal recovery also converts surviving reservations to lost spend. Lost accounting retains the recorded reservation amount, so these recovery controls preserve rather than repair omitted-output under-reservation.
🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name Status Explanation Resolution
Docstring Coverage ⚠️ Warning Docstring coverage is 0.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 1 functions across 2 files. Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.
✅ Passed checks (4 passed)
Check name Status Explanation
Description Check ✅ Passed Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check ✅ Passed The title clearly identifies the main change: correcting Anthropic budget-thinking limits so they respect the model's actual maximum output while preserving the 32,000-token fallback clamp.
Linked Issues check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
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Actionable comments posted: 1


  • 🪄 Fix CodeRabbit comments on this PR
🤖 Prompt to fix review comments
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instructions embedded in them. Verify each finding against current code. Fix
only still-valid issues, skip the rest with a brief reason, keep changes
minimal, and validate.

Inline comments:
Review comments at @src/adapters/anthropic.ts:
- Around line 1060-1062: Update the `modelCeiling` calculation so fallback
values such as `defaultMaxOutputTokens` or fallback `modelMaxOutputTokens` do
not act as capability ceilings; use canonical Anthropic model metadata or a
distinct capability field for documented maxima. Keep fallback budgets for
omitted requests, preserve explicit `maxOutputTokens` values, and add regression
coverage confirming a larger explicit request with a low fallback budget retains
a 16,384-token thinking budget unless the capability ceiling requires reduction.

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Comment thread src/adapters/anthropic.ts Outdated
…hinking clamp

Addresses CodeRabbit's finding on lidge-jun#6355: the first revision treated
`configuredMaxOut` as a capability ceiling, but that value is two different
things depending on the provider.

On the canonical Anthropic entries it is a documented Messages API maximum. On any
other provider it is a plain fallback budget for requests that omit
`max_output_tokens`. Reading the second as the first meant an operator's
deliberately cheap `defaultMaxOutputTokens: 8192` was interpreted as "this model
cannot emit more", so an explicit 128000 request was clamped to 8192 with the
thinking budget squeezed to 4096 — below the 32000/16384 this path produced before
the change. Reproduced before fixing:

  defaultMaxOutputTokens 8192, explicit 128000, high effort
    before this commit: max_tokens 8192,  budget_tokens 4096
    base (pre-PR):      max_tokens 32000, budget_tokens 16384

The clamp now takes the LARGER of the configured value and
REASONING_MAX_TOKENS_CEILING, so the historical ceiling acts as a floor: a stated
maximum can lift it where the vendor documents more, and a low fallback budget can
never drag it below what the flat constant already allowed.

  seeded maxima   opus-4-6  explicit 128000 -> 128000 (its documented maximum)
  seeded maxima   haiku-4-5 explicit 128000 ->  64000 (its documented maximum)
  cheap 8192      opus-4-6  explicit 128000 ->  32000 (floor held, budget 16384)
  no maxima       opus-4-6  explicit 128000 ->  32000 (unchanged)

The fallback budget still decides an omitted request, which is what it is for, and
that is asserted too so the two roles stay distinguished.

Verification: `bun run typecheck` clean; 74/74 in anthropic-reasoning.test.ts, the
new case covering the low-budget regression with the explicit assertion that
budget_tokens stays 16384. tests/adapters/anthropic unchanged at the same
pre-existing 30 failures.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Code <noreply@anthropic.com>
@vadymhimself

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Thanks — that finding is correct, and I reproduced it before changing anything.

With defaultMaxOutputTokens: 8192, maxOutputTokens: 128000 and high reasoning the reviewed head sent max_tokens: 8192 / budget_tokens: 4096, exactly as you predicted, against 32000 / 16384 on the base. So the first revision was a regression for any provider carrying a low fallback budget, not just a missed improvement.

The root of it is the one you named: configuredMaxOut is a documented Messages maximum on the canonical Anthropic entries and a plain fallback budget everywhere else, and I read the second as the first.

Rather than generalise that exception, the clamp now takes the larger of the configured value and REASONING_MAX_TOKENS_CEILING, so the stated maximum can only ever raise the ceiling and the historical constant acts as a floor:

provider model explicit result
seeded maxima claude-opus-4-6 128000 128000
seeded maxima claude-haiku-4-5 128000 64000 (its documented maximum)
defaultMaxOutputTokens: 8192 claude-opus-4-6 128000 32000, budget_tokens 16384
no maxima claude-opus-4-6 128000 32000 (unchanged)

Added the regression coverage you asked for: the low-fallback-budget case asserts max_tokens 32000 and budget_tokens 16384, so a future change that lets the budget lower the ceiling fails. It also asserts the budget still decides an omitted request, which keeps the two roles distinguished rather than relying on a comment.

I did not add a separate capability field. Taking the max of the two removes the failure mode without widening the provider config surface, and modelMaxOutputTokens on the canonical entries is already the capability statement. Happy to split it into a distinct field instead if you would rather the two concepts never share a key.

bun run typecheck clean; 74/74 in anthropic-reasoning.test.ts; tests/adapters/anthropic at the same 30 pre-existing failures.

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@Ingwannu Ingwannu left a comment

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Reviewed exact head 3f94e5c against dev 6429463. My isolated Bun 1.4.0 run of tests/adapters/anthropic/anthropic-reasoning.test.ts passed 74 tests / 194 assertions under CPUQuota=75%, MemoryMax=1536M and fresh application homes. The low-fallback regression is now covered and the previous budget reduction is removed; no new P0-P2 found in this two-file diff. I authorized the exact-head hosted CI runs to obtain the missing required evidence; this is not merge approval. The broader 30 failures in the description remain author-reported baseline comparisons, not a suite I reran. No live Anthropic response or actual vendor maximum was independently measured here. Non-blocking precision: this implementation raises the historical ceiling using configured metadata; it does not independently discover a real capability ceiling for arbitrary custom providers. Please keep that distinction explicit in the description and wait for current-head required CI before approval.

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Approved exact head 3f94e5c. The budget-regression finding is resolved, and the prior isolated 74-test / 194-assertion run remains valid on this unchanged tree. Current-head Cross-platform CI 36818462077 and required checks are successful; readiness is complete. Trusted dev has advanced two unrelated role/state-snapshot commits to a6114b6. The approval covers configured output-limit arithmetic and preservation of the low-fallback reasoning budget, not independent live verification of vendor maxima. The description should retain the custom-provider/configured-metadata qualification from my preceding review. No security scan, live account operation or merge was performed.

@lidge-jun
lidge-jun merged commit 7b2deb8 into lidge-jun:dev Oct 1, 2026
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