why use many token when few do trick

Your AI coding agent bills by the word and writes like it knows that. Caveman make it stop.

▶️ ThePrimeagen reacts: "No way this actually works"

🏆 #1 on GitHub Trending · July 2026  ·  🥇 #1 Repository of the Day on Trendshift · April 2026

#1 on Hacker News  ·  #8 Product of the Day

📄 Cited in CAVEWOMAN, an Adobe Research paper that measured caveman-style output cutting cost 1.4 to 2.4×, up to 3×  ·  🧪 Tested by JetBrains on 86 real coding tasks: "costs you nothing measurable in quality"

⚡ One command, no account, no API key. npx skills add JuliusBrussee/caveman -g → Quick Start

See it · Quick Start · The Numbers · How it compares · In the Wild · The Skill · The Proxy · Wrap · Your own app · When to Skip · Docs

🪨 See it

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, so React re-renders. Wrap the prop in useMemo.

Same diagnosis. Same fix. Same useMemo. The only thing that died was the throat-clearing.

Code, commands, file paths, and exact error messages never get cavemanned. Only the prose around them does. Security warnings and "are you sure?" confirmations come back in full sentences on their own, then caveman resumes.

Caveman no make brain smaller. Caveman make mouth smaller.

Half the fun is that your agent talks like it just discovered fire. The other half is that it is still right.

🌍 Why this exists

A token is what AI billing counts, roughly three quarters of a word. Your agent pays for every token it writes and every token it reads. Most agents write like a cover letter and read like a firehose.

Caveman attacks both ends, in the agent you run and in the one you build:

• The skill shrinks what the agent says. One rule file. Free forever. Works in 30+ agents.
• The proxy shrinks what the agent reads: logs, test output, JSON, diffs, search results. Runs on your machine. Every squeezed byte gets a backup, so the agent can always pull the original back.
• The middleware does the same inside your own code: one wrapper around the LangChain, Vercel AI SDK, OpenAI, or Anthropic call you already make. Tool results get shrunk before the model sees them, the original stays in your history, and the model can fetch it back.

Started as a joke on a Friday in April 2026. Hit 4,000 stars in a week. Now past 100,000, with a research paper, a JetBrains lab test, and a Primeagen reaction video. The joke got serious. The voice did not.

⚡ Quick Start

Caveman come in two sizes. Start small.

Small rock: the skill

A rule file that makes your agent answer in caveman. Apache-2.0, free forever, works in 30+ agents (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, Copilot, more). One command:

npx skills add JuliusBrussee/caveman -g

Type /caveman if your agent doesn't wake up on its own. That the whole install. One rock.

Big rock: the proxy

Runs on your machine, between your agent and the AI provider, and shrinks what the agent reads before every call. Apache-2.0, CLI and runtime both:

npm install -g @caveman-ai/cli && caveman setup --install
caveman claude        # or codex · gemini · aider · kilo · qwen · opencode · hermes · openclaw · pi

Your own app: the middleware

Building an agent in code instead of running one in a terminal? Same shrinking, one wrapper around the call you already make. Apache-2.0 client, stable 1.0:

npm install @caveman-ai/middleware @caveman-ai/sdk        # TypeScript, plus your framework (ai, openai, …)
pip install 'caveman-middleware[langchain]' caveman-sdk   # Python 3.11+, swap the extra for your framework

Six lines of code and a local runtime. Full walkthrough below.

They stack. Most people start with the small rock and graduate.

The full installer wires up Claude Code hooks and the statusline badge, finds every supported agent on your machine, and skips agents you no have. Safe to re-run. Needs Node.js 22.13+.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/v3.1.0/install.sh | bash

Windows, PowerShell 5.1+:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/v3.1.0/install.ps1 | iex

Just one agent:

# Claude Code
claude plugin marketplace add JuliusBrussee/caveman && claude plugin install caveman@caveman

# Gemini CLI
gemini extensions install https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman

# Oh My Pi (OMP)
npx -y github:JuliusBrussee/caveman -- --only omp

# Qwen Code CLI, then its Caveman wrapper
npm i -g @qwen-code/qwen-code
caveman qwen

# Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, and other skills-compatible agents
npx skills add JuliusBrussee/caveman --skill '*' -a codex --yes -g  # replace codex with your agent profile

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.

Changed your mind: npx -y github:JuliusBrussee/caveman -- --uninstall

The full 30+ agent matrix, dry runs, flags, and verification live in INSTALL.md.

🕐 The first five minutes

Small rock. The skill, right after npx skills add:

1. Ask it something. Any coding question. Watch the preamble vanish and the answer stay.
2. Pick your club. /caveman for the voice. /ultracave for grunts. /megacave for classical Chinese, because someone asked.
3. Commit like a caveman. /caveman-commit writes a Conventional Commit in one line.
4. Review like a caveman. /caveman-review gives one finding per line: L42: 🔴 null deref. Guard it.
5. Shrink your memory files. /caveman-compress CLAUDE.md cuts the prose, keeps every heading, path, and command, and backs up the original.
6. Come home. Say stop caveman. Normal prose returns. No hard feelings.

Big rock. The proxy, right after npm install -g @caveman-ai/cli:

1. Find out where your tokens go. caveman learn reads months of agent history already on your disk, locally, and ranks the places your tokens go, biggest first, with a one-line fix behind each. Do this before anything else. It is the most useful five minutes in this README. After