caveman

caveman is a practical output-slimming tool for developers who want to lower Claude Code expenses and can work with terse replies. It is a Claude Code skill that mandates an ultra-minimal response style, keeping code, paths, and technical terms while stripping out pleasantries.

Three tiers—Lite (grammatical), Full (article-free, fragmentary), and Ultra (heavy abbreviation)—are offered, along with sub‑skills like caveman-commit and caveman-review. An auto‑clarity safeguard restores full output on safety warnings or user confusion. Real‑world tests across debugging and middleware fixes showed 22%‑87% output token savings.

Installation is a single command; the project is open‑source and free, but users still pay for Claude API usage. It does not reduce reasoning tokens or input costs. Do not mistake it for a token‑compression engine or API gateway—it is only a stylistic prompt injection that alters generated text.

Best for high‑frequency coding interactions; unsuitable for formal documentation. Current social evidence is dominated by trending rankings and reposts with high visibility but few in‑depth evaluations.