This setting pins Claude Code’s default model to Claude Sonnet.
Sonnet balances reasoning quality and speed, making it a solid choice for most coding tasks.
Setting the model at the project level avoids relying on global config or environment variables.
When to use
- When you want a strong default model for everyday programming.
- To standardize the model across everyone working in the same repo.
- When you need more quality than Haiku without top-tier cost.
How to use
Apply the setting; to switch models later, edit the model field in settings.json.