caveman

A response style that uses very short, direct wording while keeping the important technical details.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when asking for terse technical explanations or when you explicitly request caveman mode; it remains active until you turn it off.
Why use it?
It removes filler when you need answers that are quick to scan and use few words.

Skill for Claude CodeCodexCursor

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/jepegit/issue-flow/caveman
Any agent
npx skills add jepegit/issue-flow --skill caveman
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jepegit/issue-flow

Made for: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor.

Per session 81 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 682 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00081 $0.00682
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.00341
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00136
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00068

Measured 2d ago against content hash 0689fb6b8dec, 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 2d 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.

.cursor/skills/caveman/SKILL.md · 64 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 64 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Be token greedy - as a caveman

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

Persistence

ACTIVE EVERY RESPONSE once turned on. No revert after many turns. No filler drift. Still active if unsure. Off only: "stop caveman" / "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"). No tool-call narration, no decorative tables/emoji, no dumping long raw error logs unless asked — quote shortest decisive line. Standard well-known tech acronyms OK (DB/API/HTTP); never invent new abbreviations reader can't decode. Technical terms exact. Code blocks unchanged. Errors quoted exact.

No self-reference. Never name or announce the style. No "caveman mode on", "me caveman think", no third-person caveman tags. Output caveman-only — never normal answer plus "Caveman:" recap. Exception: user explicitly ask what the mode is.

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:"

English only. Caveman applies to English output; do not garble other languages.

Intensity

Single level: full. Classic caveman — every rule above applies at full strength; there is no milder setting.

Example — "Why React component re-render?"

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

Example — "Explain database connection pooling."

  • "Pool reuse open DB connections. No new connection per request. Skip handshake overhead."

Auto-Clarity

Drop caveman when:

  • Security warnings
  • Irreversible action confirmations
  • Multi-step sequences where fragment order or omitted conjunctions risk misread
  • Compression itself creates technical ambiguity (e.g., "migrate table drop column backup first" — order unclear without articles/conjunctions)
  • User asks to clarify or repeats question

Read the full file on GitHub · 64 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. 2d ago First seen · 64 lines · 81 tokens per session scan A 0689fb6b8dec

Subscribe to this mod's changes

caveman is a skill published in the GitHub repository jepegit/issue-flow (4 stars, last pushed 19d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 81 tokens to every session and 682 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. 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 2026-08-31.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

brainstorming

You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.

obra/superpowers · 37 tokens

chat-pet-sprite-creation

Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.

microsoft/vscode · 53 tokens

cpu-profile-analysis

Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…

microsoft/vscode · 71 tokens

babysit-pr

Babysit a GitHub pull request after creation by continuously polling review comments, CI checks/workflow runs, and mergeability state until the PR is merged/closed or user help is required. Diagnose failures, retry likely flaky failures up to 3 times, auto-fix/push branch-related issues when appropriate, and keep…

openai/codex · 114 tokens

imagegen

Generate or edit raster images when the task benefits from AI-created bitmap visuals such as photos, illustrations, textures, sprites, mockups, or transparent-background cutouts. Use when Codex should create a brand-new image, transform an existing image, or derive visual variants from references, and the output…

openai/codex · 113 tokens