Thanks a lot for this comment 
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No; I just wanted to point this issue with hot pixels.
I use the default settings and sometimes add a bit unsharp mask with a very high contrast threshold to get more definition on large details.
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Auto settings work fine for me, and pictures can take some additional sharpening with USM or post-resize sharpening if you want, although how much and when will depend on what you want to do with the picture. I find the defaults do a great job on most pictures, in the rare case that I find itās too aggresive, Iāll adjust the contrast mask or reduce the radius a little, but for most pictures I just let CS do what it does. I find the results great, for some pictures it makes a massive difference. The corner radius boost seems pretty useful, but its rare for me to have corners that are in focus and want sharpening, so I havenāt had a chance to need it yet. Anyway I think its a great addition to RT, it makes the photos better, automatically, and does it quite well.
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I just enable it and smile!
Comments like these have made me realize how picky and inanely technical and exacting I have become in my post-processing, relative to others. I just canāt find myself relating to these attitudes and relying on defaults.
Of course, my pickiness doesnāt really slow me down, as I use a lot of copy paste of profiles for similar pictures, and muscle memory on using Rawtherapee, since I have been using it so long.
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You shouldnāt dismiss the defaults just because theyāre the defaults. 
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Yeah, the defaults seem quite good to me for most pictures, they seem to be set on a per-picture basis so its not like youāre accepting some arbitrary defaultā¦of course, the sliders are there for a reason, and seasoning to taste is why we all shoot RAW in the first placeā¦but I for one have been quite enjoying (mostly) not thinking about the CS tool and just enjoying the sharper pictures. Maybe thatās why CS is making my pictures look so much better, its one of the few tools Iām not touching with my meathooks lol.
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Capture sharpening has improved my results in my eye, though technically not simplifying my workflow. I have three dynamic profiles, for low, medium and high ISOs, with the main difference between them being the contrast threshold for RL deconvolution and post-resize (USM) sharpening. Before, I used sharpening at or near max strength, always adjusted to balance sharpness with artifacts.
Now, I enable capture sharpening with default automatic settings in each profile, I switched from AMaZE to RCD in low and medium profiles, and I set RL deconvolution and post-resize USM to very conservative values (higher contrast thresholds, default half strength, and radius roughly tuned for each profile.)
As such, adjusting the sharpen settings is still part of my workflow, but the pre-configured starting point is much closer to final than before, and the fine-tuning I do still need to do is far more lax, with a larger range of values being acceptable with less risk of artifacts.
The final result is that Iām more pleased with the outcome of my processing, with at most the same amount of effort as before, but typically with less stress over balancing the exact right values.
As a side note, when I shoot with my older point & shoot that I specifically use for the digital graininess, I like to apply some weak RL deconvolution across the whole images sans contrast threshold, to intentionally enhance the noise. By adding CS to the mix I can now benefit from its selective nature to moderately boost acutance without oversharpening or creating halos. Itās especially nice as diffraction is more of an issue with those 1/1.7" sensors. Using CS is pretty much a foolproof way to improve any image.
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I sincerely thank everyone for the answers and the collaboration, now I have a bit clearer ideas on how to use CS.
I have been using RawTherapee from several versions back after leaving C1 and will never abandon it. The RT community is exceptional.
Thank you all
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Auto contrast threshold and auto radius are per picture.
Auto iteration limitation is by 32x32 pixels. The image is processed in tiles of size 32x32 pixels and each tile gets its own auto iteration limitation
Hereās an example raw file (shot using a 4.0/200 mm lens at f4.0) where a value of 0.20 for corner boost improves sharpness in the outer regions.
This file is licensed Creative Commons, By-Attribution, Share-Alike.
D700_20120801_0313.NEF (15.0 MB)
Just found this
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Good point. A default programmed by /u/heckflosse is probably much better than a default set by some shmuck in a dreary Adobe corporate office who doesnāt even do photography.
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I have a similar approach.
Most of my photos end up on a hard drive with a select few appearing on Instagram, so generally my editing comes down to moving things until I like what I see.
To have a starting point with CS and a few other tools in RT with their default settings just makes editing a little quicker and overall more enjoyable. 
My Canon cameras make use of anti-aliasing filters which require some additional sharpening be made to the raw images. I do mostly landscape photography which requires the image to be very sharp say in comparison to portraiture.
So I have been using the default auto Capture Sharpening together with some USM and a tiny bit of edge sharpening on my landscapes. Before Capture Sharpening I preferred to use the RL deconvolution method for sharpening on low ISO images, but with CS engaged RL deconvolution sharpening produces noticeable artifacts. The USM method remains clean with a radius of 50 and strength of 150.
The strategy produces landscapes which appear pleasingly sharper right into the corners viewed at 100% and especially with corner radius boost enabled at 15 for lenses which could use a little help toward the periphery.
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Welcome aboard!
Yeah, thatās what I love about Rawtherapee. It is just so powerful, and keeps on getting even more powerful as time goes on. The images I can get out of Rawtherapee are so great, and if I need to do more advanced pixel editing things, such as compositing, dodge and burn, and removing things, I can get a well detailed and richly rendered intermediary tiff out of Rawtherapee.
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Iāve just taken it out for a spin now, and after setting the radius wrong a few times, I suddenly found some settings that did wonders in terms of sharpening.
Picture settings: Nikon D600, 85mm F1.4 shot at F5.6, iso 100. Sunlight.
Contrast threshold: 5
Radius: 0.66
Corner radius boost: 0.00
Iterations: 20 (with auto limit)
And holy cow, what a result! I think I might stop using the normal āSharpeningā, even though Iāve always liked the quality of that. This new thing seems to beat it! Okay, it certainly uses more CPU, but who cares if the result is better. So far Iām very impressed.
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It uses more CPU in preview mode because it is applied on the whole image, not only on the preview , but you get some speed back when panning around in >= 1:1 view because itās already applied. In final processing (Queue/SaveAs) itās faster than the normal āRL-Sharpeningā
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Yeah I did notice that when scrolling around, it didnāt feel it at all. Itās only when you enable it or adjust it, that itās slow. So yeah, not an issue at all.
I did have a weird mishap when I tried batch changing the Radius setting on three images at once from the file browser, using the batch edit mode thingie. But I might have goofed up. I havenāt done systematic tests of that yet. So far Iām just playing around and getting to know it.