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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.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L29q2LRiMRc"> <img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/L29q2LRiMRc/hqdefault.jpg" alt="ThePrimeagen reacts to Caveman: No way this actually works" width="360"> </a>

▶️ ThePrimeagen reacts: "No way this actually works"

<a href="https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/stargazers"><img src="https://img.shields.io/github/stars/JuliusBrussee/caveman?style=flat-square&color=F0A63C&label=stars" alt="GitHub stars"></a> <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/@caveman-ai/cli"><img src="https://img.shields.io/npm/dm/@caveman-ai/cli?style=flat-square&color=F0A63C&label=cli%20downloads" alt="npm downloads"></a> <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/@caveman-ai/middleware"><img src="https://img.shields.io/npm/v/@caveman-ai/middleware?style=flat-square&color=F0A63C&label=middleware%20npm" alt="middleware on npm"></a> <a href="https://pypi.org/project/caveman-middleware/"><img src="https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/caveman-middleware?style=flat-square&color=F0A63C&label=middleware%20pypi" alt="middleware on PyPI"></a> <a href="./INSTALL.md"><img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/works_with-30%2B_agents-orange?style=flat-square" alt="30+ agents"></a> <a href="#wrap-any-agent"><img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/wraps-10_agents_natively-blue?style=flat-square" alt="10 native wrap profiles"></a> <a href="#-license"><img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/license-MIT_%2B_BSL-green?style=flat-square" alt="License"></a> <a href="https://skills.sh/JuliusBrussee/caveman"><img src="https://skills.sh/b/JuliusBrussee/caveman" alt="skills.sh"></a>

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

#1 on Hacker News · 904 points · 366 comments  ·  #8 Product of the Day on Product Hunt

📄 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"

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

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

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🪨 See it

<table> <tr> <th width="50%">🗣️ Normal agent · 69 tokens</th> <th width="50%"><img src="docs/assets/dancing-rock.svg" width="18" height="18" alt=""> Caveman agent · 19 tokens</th> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top">

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.

</td> <td valign="top">

New object ref each render. Inline object prop = new ref = re-render. Wrap in useMemo.

</td> </tr> </table>

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.

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🌍 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.

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⚡ Quick Start

Caveman come in two sizes. Start small.

Small rock: the skill

A rule file that makes your agent answer in caveman. MIT, 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. MIT CLI, BSL-1.1 runtime:

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. MIT client, alpha today:

npm install @caveman-ai/middleware @caveman-ai/sdk        # TypeScript, plus your framework (ai, openai, …)
pip install 'caveman-middleware[langchain]' caveman-sdk   # Python 3.13+, 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.

<details> <summary><strong>More doors into the cave</strong> · full installer, Windows, single agents, uninstall</summary> <br>

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/v2.7.0/install.sh | bash

Windows, PowerShell 5.1+:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/v2.7.0/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

</details>

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. Turn the dial. /caveman lite for tight-but-polite. /caveman ultra for grunts. /caveman wenyan 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 your token sinks worst-first with a one-line fix behind each. Do this before anything else. It is the most useful five minutes in this README.
2. Let it fix them. caveman learn implement hands each fix to Claude Code or Codex one diff at a time, applied only on your yes, and reverts anything that did not lower tokens per turn.
3. Wrap your agent. caveman claude (or codex, gemini, aider, opencode, pi, …) puts the proxy in front of it. Logs, test output, JSON, and diffs get shrunk before the provider sees them. Originals stay on disk, and the agent can pull any of them back.
4. Shrink the noisy stuff. caveman shrink -- pnpm test compresses command output. caveman browse <url> gives the agent a compressed view of a web page instead of a 15,000-token accessibility dump.
5. Prove it on your own work. caveman trial -- claude runs a real session with and without caveman, then caveman trial report shows the difference. That A/B outranks every number on this page. A trial needs its own proxy, so if you already did step 3 it will tell you to run caveman disable claude first, and caveman enable claude after. Caveman rather say "cannot measure this" than hand you a report full of zeros.
6. Shrink caveman itself. caveman convert --dry-run shows which installed skills get cheaper as PNG pages the model reads as an image. Convert the profitable ones, revert byte-for-byte any time.
7. Watch the bill. caveman stats for history and estimates. /caveman-stats inside Claude Code for that session.

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📊 The Numbers

Every number below is either from a committed run in this repo or from a named third party. Nothing rounded up. Where a number is small, it says so. Where a row is red, it stays red.

What the skill saves (writing less)

| Who measured | What they measured | Result | |---|---|---| | Adobe Research (CAVEWOMAN, arXiv 2606.24083) | Eight models, five datasets, five compression levels | Output-side caveman style cuts realized cost 1.4 to 2.4× per model, up to 3× in the best c