Ask. Achieve. The canonical user-facing entry to claudemax — describe your goal, the SOTA-2026 pipeline (deepresearch → multispec → parallel /goal → verify) handles the rest. Same engine as /cmax with a friendlier verb. CLI equivalent is `cmax ask "<goal>"`.
The default FAT umbrella. Auto-runs deepresearch + multispec decomposition + parallel /goal + verify. Opus for planning/judgment/verification; Sonnet for sub-Spec execution (escalates per router). Multispec engine selects Mode A (SDK subagents) or Mode B (Claude Code Agent Teams) automatically based on work size. Your default daily-driver.
Max-effectiveness umbrella. Opus for EVERYTHING — planning, decomposition, sub-Spec /goal execution, verification. Use for novel domains, security/auth/payments, or when you want the highest ceiling regardless of cost.
Show the model-routing decision for a task (Fable/Opus/Sonnet/Haiku) with reasoning. Use before launching a packet to sanity-check the tier and to override when you have stronger judgment than the heuristic.
Reviews a proposed diff for correctness, security, style, taste alignment. Distinct from /audit (which reviews existing code, not diffs) and /verify (which checks SPEC completion).
Spec quality gate. Every completion condition must have a mechanically-checkable verifyHint (file path, command, test name, behavior). Blocks /goal handoff if the spec wouldn't be verifiable.
Independent Opus supervisor pass that re-reads the repo blind and re-checks every SPEC completion condition. The source of truth for whether a run actually succeeded. Never skip.
Iterative web-current research with source ledger. Sonnet collects, Opus synthesizes. Parallel WebSearch + WebFetch across sub-queries. Output is a structured ResearchBrief with citations, persisted to memory.research_sources. The default first step of every umbrella when the goal is novel or time-sensitive.