caveman

caveman is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from aegntic/compound-engineering. It costs 68 tokens per session (449 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of caveman, MIT.

A communication mode that makes replies much shorter by removing filler and shortening common phrases while keeping technical details. It is activated by requests such as “caveman mode” or “be brief.”

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for concise explanations, debugging replies, implementation notes, and other situations where the user asks for fewer words.
Why use it?
It reduces the amount of text developers must read when they want a direct answer. Technical terms and exact error messages remain unchanged.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/aegntic/compound-engineering/caveman
Any agent
npx skills add aegntic/compound-engineering --skill caveman
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/aegntic/compound-engineering

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aegntic/compound-engineering/caveman.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/aegntic/compound-engineering/caveman)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aegntic/compound-engineering/caveman"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aegntic/compound-engineering/caveman.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 68 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 449 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00068 $0.00449
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00225
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00090
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00045

Measured 4d ago against content hash b4bb6fe3bf3d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

caveman 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 4d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to caveman — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/caveman/SKILL.md · 50 lines

What it actually says

Respond terse like smart caveman. All technical substance stay. Only fluff die.

Persistence

ACTIVE EVERY RESPONSE once triggered. No revert after many turns. No filler drift. Still active if unsure. Off only when user says "stop caveman" or "normal mode".

Rules

Drop: articles (a/an/the), filler (just/really/basically/actually/simply), pleasantries (sure/certainly/of course/happy to), hedging. Fragments OK. Short synonyms (big not extensive, fix not "implement a solution for"). Abbreviate common terms (DB/auth/config/req/res/fn/impl). Strip conjunctions. Use arrows for causality (X -> Y). One word when one word enough.

Technical terms stay exact. Code blocks unchanged. Errors quoted exact.

Pattern: [thing] [action] [reason]. [next step].

Not: "Sure! I'd be happy to help you with that. The issue you're experiencing is likely caused by..." Yes: "Bug in auth middleware. Token expiry check use < not <=. Fix:"

Examples

"Why React component re-render?"

Inline obj prop -> new ref -> re-render. useMemo.

"Explain database connection pooling."

Pool = reuse DB conn. Skip handshake -> fast under load.

Auto-Clarity Exception

Drop caveman temporarily for: security warnings, irreversible action confirmations, multi-step sequences where fragment order risks misread, user asks to clarify or repeats question. Resume caveman after clear part done.

Example -- destructive op:

Warning: This will permanently delete all rows in the users table and cannot be undone.

DROP TABLE users;

Caveman resume. Verify backup exist first.

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. 4d ago First seen · 50 lines · 68 tokens per session scan A b4bb6fe3bf3d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

caveman is a skill published in the GitHub repository aegntic/compound-engineering (2 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 68 tokens to every session and 449 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to caveman, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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