How does "Effort" in Claude models affect the output?

Hi all! I'm intending to switch platform from Gemini since they've butchered their model, and I'm trying out Claude web on the free tier, before deciding to subscribe. Using Sonnet 5 with Max Effort and Thinking . For money related projects and job projects, I'm afraid to use "lesser models/quality" since I have to have some faith that the LLM can actually be of help rather than butcher my project and give wrong outputs with confidence - and I end up indirectly agreeing with it's output over time, even if i