caveman-compress

caveman-compress is a cursor rule for Cursor from GktuOktay/ai-skills. It costs 0 tokens per session (1,081 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A command-line tool that shortens Markdown files containing instructions, to-do lists, or preferences into compact wording. It saves a readable backup outside the original file.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for compressing files such as CLAUDE.md, to-do lists, and preference files before an agent reads them.
Why use it?
Long instruction files use more of an AI assistant's input space. This reduces that text while keeping the original available as a backup.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Written for Cursor: a Cursor rule (.mdc). Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md.

Good fit It is for compressing files such as CLAUDE.md, to-do lists, and preference files before an agent reads them.

Compare 6 cursor rules from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/gktuoktay/ai-skills/caveman-compress
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/GktuOktay/ai-skills

Made for: Cursor.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for caveman-compress

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/gktuoktay/ai-skills/caveman-compress/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/gktuoktay/ai-skills/caveman-compress)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/gktuoktay/ai-skills/caveman-compress"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/gktuoktay/ai-skills/caveman-compress/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for caveman-compress

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/gktuoktay/ai-skills/caveman-compress"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/gktuoktay/ai-skills/caveman-compress.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 1,081 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00000 $0.01081
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00541
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00216
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00108

Measured 8d ago against content hash fae36f7ee066, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

caveman-compress scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 8d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

agents/cursor/rules/caveman-compress.mdc · 107 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 107 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Caveman Compress

Purpose

Compress natural language files (CLAUDE.md, todos, preferences) into caveman-speak to reduce input tokens. Compressed version overwrites original. Human-readable backup saved as <filename>.original.md, but NOT beside the source file — it lives in an out-of-tree data dir ($XDG_DATA_HOME/caveman-compress/backups/<parent-dir-name>/, or %LOCALAPPDATA%\caveman-compress\backups\<parent-dir-name>\ on Windows) so skill auto-loaders don't re-ingest it as a live file.

Trigger

/caveman-compress <filepath> or when user asks to compress a memory file.

Process

  1. The compression scripts live in scripts/ (adjacent to this SKILL.md). If the path is not immediately available, search for scripts/__main__.py next to this SKILL.md.

  2. From the directory containing this SKILL.md, run:

python3 -m scripts <absolute_filepath>

  1. The CLI will:
  • detect file type (no tokens)
  • call Claude to compress
  • validate output (no tokens)
  • if errors: cherry-pick fix with Claude (targeted fixes only, no recompression)
  • retry up to 2 times
  • if still failing after 2 retries: report error to user, leave original file untouched
  1. Return result to user

Compression Rules

Remove

  • Articles: a, an, the
  • Filler: just, really, basically, actually, simply, essentially, generally
  • Pleasantries: "sure", "certainly", "of course", "happy to", "I'd recommend"
  • Hedging: "it might be worth", "you could consider", "it would be good to"
  • Redundant phrasing: "in order to" → "to", "make sure to" → "ensure", "the reason is because" → "because"
  • Connective fluff: "however", "furthermore", "additionally", "in addition"

Preserve EXACTLY (never modify)

  • Code blocks (fenced ``` and indented)
  • Inline code (backtick content)
  • URLs and links (full URLs, markdown links)
  • File paths (/src/components/..., ./config.yaml)
  • Commands (npm install, git commit, docker build)
  • Technical terms (library names, API names, protocols, algorithms)
  • Proper nouns (project names, people, companies)
  • Dates, version numbers, numeric values
  • Environment variables ($HOME, NODE_ENV)

Read the full file on GitHub · 107 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 8d ago First seen · 107 lines · 1,081 tokens per session scan A fae36f7ee066

Subscribe to this mod's changes

caveman-compress is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository GktuOktay/ai-skills (2 stars, last pushed 9d ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 1,081 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.