🪨 why use many token when few token do trick — Claude Code skill that cuts 65% of tokens by talking like caveman
# Add to your Claude Code skills
git clone https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/cavemanGuides for using ai agents skills like caveman.
Last scanned: 4/15/2026
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"issues": [],
"status": "PASSED",
"scannedAt": "2026-04-15T06:03:37.350Z",
"semgrepRan": false,
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}Caveman is a skill/plugin for Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, Copilot, and 30+ other agents. Install once. Agent drops the filler and answers in tight caveman-speak, keeping code, commands, and errors byte-for-byte exact. You save output tokens on every reply, forever.
The reason your React component is re-rendering is likely because you're creating a new object reference on each render cycle. When you pass an inline object as a prop, React's shallow comparison sees it as a different object every time, which triggers a re-render. I'd recommend using useMemo to memoize the object.
New object ref each render. Inline object prop = new ref = re-render. Wrap in
useMemo.
Sure! I'd be happy to help you with that. The issue you're experiencing is most likely caused by your authentication middleware not properly validating the token expiry. Let me take a look and suggest a fix.
Bug in auth middleware. Token expiry check use
<not<=. Fix:
Same fix. Third of the words. Nothing technical lost.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ output tokens saved █████████ 65% │
│ input tokens saved ░░░░░░░░░ 0% │
│ technical accuracy █████████ 100% │
│ vibes █████████ OOG │
└────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Caveman no make brain smaller. Caveman make mouth smaller. Shrinks what the agent says, not what it knows.
One command. Finds every agent on your machine. Installs for each.
# macOS · Linux · WSL · Git Bash
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/main/install.sh | bash
# Windows · PowerShell 5.1+
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/main/install.ps1 | iex
~30 seconds. Needs Node ≥18. Skips agents you no have. Safe to re-run.
[!TIP] Turn it on: type
/cavemanor say "talk like caveman". Turn it off: say "normal mode". On Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini it's already on from message one. No command needed.
Every agent has its own path (plugin, extension, rule file, or npx skills add). The full per-agent matrix, all flags, dry-run, and uninstall live in INSTALL.md. A few common ones:
# Claude Code plugin
claude plugin marketplace add JuliusBrussee/caveman && claude plugin install caveman@caveman
# Gemini CLI extension
gemini extensions install https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman
# Cursor / Windsurf / Cline / Codex / 30+ more, via the skills registry
npx skills add JuliusBrussee/caveman -a cursor
Install broke? Open your agent in this repo and say: "Read CLAUDE.md and INSTALL.md, install caveman for me." Agent read repo, agent fix own brain. Snake eat tail.
Six levels. Switch anytime with /caveman <level>. Level sticks until you change it or the session ends.
| Level | Same sentence, shrunk |
|---|---|
| normal agent | You should wrap the object in useMemo, since a new reference is created on every render. |
lite |
Wrap object in useMemo. New ref created every render. |
full (default) |
New ref each render. Wrap object in useMemo. |
ultra |
New ref/render. useMemo it. |
wenyan |
New ref every render, so wrap in useMemo — rendered in classical Chinese, shorter still. |
[!NOTE] Speak your tongue. Caveman keeps your language. Write Portuguese, caveman grunt Portuguese. Spanish, French, same. It compresses the style, never translates.
wenyanmode is the exception on purpose: classical Chinese packs the most meaning per token.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/caveman [lite|full|ultra|wenyan] |
Compress every reply. Level sticks for the session. |
/caveman-commit |
Conventional Commit messages, ≤50-char subject. Why over what. |
/caveman-review |
One-line PR comments: L42: 🔴 bug: user null. Add guard. |
/caveman-stats |
Real session token usage, lifetime savings, USD. Tweetable line with --share. |
/caveman-compress <file> |
Rewrite a memory file (like CLAUDE.md) into caveman-speak. Cuts ~46% input tokens every session after. Code, URLs, paths byte-preserved. |
caveman-shrink |
MCP middleware. Wraps any MCP server, compresses its tool descriptions. npm. |
cavecrew-* |
Caveman subagents (investigator, builder, reviewer). ~60% fewer tokens than vanilla, so main context lasts longer. |
[!TIP] On Claude Code the statusline shows
[CAVEMAN] ⛏ 12.4k— that's your lifetime tokens saved, updated on every/caveman-stats. Silence it withCAVEMAN_STATUSLINE_SAVINGS=0.
Real token counts from the Claude API. Average 65% output reduction across 10 prompts (range 22–87%), measured against default verbose replies. Output tokens only, committed and reproducible in benchmarks/ and evals/.
| Task | Normal | Caveman | Saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Explain React re-render bug | 1180 | 159 | 87% |
| Fix auth middleware token expiry | 704 | 121 | 83% |
| Set up PostgreSQL connection pool | 2347 | 380 | 84% |
| Explain git rebase vs merge | 702 | 292 | 58% |
| Refactor callback to async/await | 387 | 301 | 22% |
| Architecture: microservices vs monolith | 446 | 310 | 30% |
| Review PR for security issues | 678 | 398 | 41% |
| Docker multi-stage build | 1042 | 290 | 72% |
| Debug PostgreSQL race condition | 1200 | 232 | 81% |
| Implement React error boundary | 3454 | 456 | 87% |
| Average | 1214 | 294 | 65% |
[!IMPORTANT] Honest number warning. Caveman only shrinks output tokens. Input and reasoning tokens are untouched, and the skill itself adds ~1–1.5k input tokens per turn. So whole-session savings run smaller than the output number, and on already-terse workloads they can go net-negative. The real win is readability and speed. Cost savings are the bonus. When caveman wins, when it loses, and how to measure it yourself: docs/HONEST-NUMBERS.md.
Turns out short isn't just cheaper. A March 2026 paper, Brevity Constraints Reverse Performance Hierarchies in Language Models, tested 31 models and found that constraining large models to brief answers improved accuracy by ~26 points on some benchmarks. Sometimes less word = more correct.
| File | Original | Compressed | Saved |
|---|---|---|---|
claude-md-preferences.md |
706 | 285 | 59.6% |
project-notes.md |
1145 | 535 | 53.3% |
claude-md-project.md |
1122 | 636 | 43.3% |
todo-list.md |
627 | 388 | 38.1% |
mixed-with-code.md |
888 | 560 | 36.9% |
| Average | 898 | 481 | 46% |
Every session after, that file loads ~46% smaller. Input tokens saved forever, not just one reply.
This skill shrinks what an agent says. caveman-code shrinks everything — a full terminal coding agent, caveman top to bottom. ~2× fewer tokens than Codex on identical tasks. 20+ providers, plan mode, autopilot goal loop, MIT.
npm install -g @juliusbrussee/caveman-code
Five tools, one idea: agent do more with less.
| Repo | What it shrinks |
|---|---|
| caveman (you here) | What the agent says |
| caveman-code | The whole agent, end to end |
| cavemem | What the agent remembers, across sessions |
| cavekit | The build loop — |
caveman is an open-source ai agents skill for AI coding assistants such as Claude Code, Codex CLI, and ChatGPT, built by JuliusBrussee. 🪨 why use many token when few token do trick — Claude Code skill that cuts 65% of tokens by talking like caveman. It has 84,189 GitHub stars.
Yes. caveman passed SkillsLLM's automated security scan — a dependency vulnerability audit plus prompt-injection heuristics — with no high-severity issues. You can read the full report in the Security Report section on this page.
Clone the repository with "git clone https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman" and add it to your Claude Code skills directory (see the Installation section above).
caveman is primarily written in JavaScript. It is open-source under JuliusBrussee on GitHub, so you can review or fork the full source.
Yes. SkillsLLM lists many other AI Agents skills you can browse and compare side by side. Open the AI Agents category from the badge at the top of this page, or use the Related Skills and comparison links further down to weigh caveman against similar tools.
If Caveman cuts your token bill, the next step is building agents that put those savings to work. Agentic AI for Beginners covers tool use, the ReAct pattern, memory, and deployment — 41 minutes, hands-on.
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