ADR 0221: Render Canonical Thinking-Level Values Without Translation

• Status: Accepted
• Date: 2026-09-11
• Deciders: PI-Desktop desktop UI maintainers
• Amends: D369, ADR 0202
• Related: 02-i18n-english-first · 08-component-spec · E2E-219

Context

Thinking levels are protocol values shared by provider bindings, session configuration, runtime results, and model metadata. The renderer translated the same values in the Composer, model configuration, and delegation cards, which made a stable technical value vary with the selected application locale.

Decision

1. Composer, model-configuration, and delegation surfaces render the canonical values off, minimal, low, medium, high, xhigh, and max as-is.
2. The thinking-level values are not locale catalog entries. The existing localized labels for these values are removed from every shipped catalog.
3. off and omit remain omitted from delegation captions as specified by ADR 0202. This amendment changes presentation only; effective metadata, clamping, provider requests, protocol, and storage are unchanged.

Consequences

Users see the same unambiguous value in every locale, and provider/runtime terminology remains easy to compare with configuration and diagnostics. The values are intentionally lower-case because that is their canonical wire and storage representation.

Verification

apps/desktop/test/thinking-ui.test.mjs verifies that the renderer does not ask i18n for thinking-level labels and renders the values directly. packages/i18n/test/catalogs.test.mjs verifies that the removed thinking-level keys are absent from every shipped catalog. E2E-219 covers live, narrow-layout, and restored delegation presentation.