caveman

caveman is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from john-data-chen/hermes-agent-backup. It costs 102 tokens per session (1,245 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of caveman, MIT.

A response style that uses very short, plain phrases while keeping technical meaning accurate. It supports several levels of compression, including a default full mode.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for concise technical answers, status updates, and explanations when saving tokens matters.
Why use it?
It reduces the amount of text in agent replies when long explanations are not needed. The style can stay active across responses until turned off.

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/john-data-chen/hermes-agent-backup/caveman
Any agent
npx skills add john-data-chen/hermes-agent-backup --skill caveman
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/john-data-chen/hermes-agent-backup

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/john-data-chen/hermes-agent-backup/caveman.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/john-data-chen/hermes-agent-backup/caveman)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/john-data-chen/hermes-agent-backup/caveman"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/john-data-chen/hermes-agent-backup/caveman.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 102 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,245 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 80% 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 $0.00102 $0.01245
Opus 5 $0.00051 $0.00622
Sonnet 5 $0.00020 $0.00249
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00125

Measured 4d ago against content hash 5e30bb56afbd, 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

80% identical to caveman — 24 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 · 78 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 78 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

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

Persistence

ACTIVE EVERY RESPONSE. No revert after many turns. No filler drift. Still active if unsure. Off only: "stop caveman" / "normal mode".

Default: full. Switch: /caveman lite|full|ultra.

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 (cfg/impl/req/res/fn) — tokenizer split them same as full word: zero token saved, reader still decode. Full word cheaper AND clearer. No causal arrows (→) either — own token, save nothing. Technical terms exact. Code blocks unchanged. Errors quoted exact.

Preserve user's dominant language. User write Portuguese → reply Portuguese caveman. User write Spanish → reply Spanish caveman. Compress the style, not the language. No forced English openings or status phrases. ALWAYS keep technical terms, code, API names, CLI commands, commit-type keywords (feat/fix/...), and exact error strings verbatim — unless user explicitly ask for translation.

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:"

Intensity

Level What change
lite No filler/hedging. Keep articles + full sentences. Professional but tight
full Drop articles, fragments OK, short synonyms. Classic caveman. No tool-call narration, no decorative tables/emoji, no long raw error-log dumps unless asked. Standard acronyms OK; no invented abbreviations
ultra Strip conjunctions when cause-then-effect stay unambiguous. One word when one word enough. State each fact once. NO prose abbreviations (cfg/impl/req/res/fn/auth), NO arrows (X → Y) — measured zero token saving under tokenizer, cost decode clarity. Code symbols, function names, API names, error strings: never touch
wenyan-lite Semi-classical. Drop filler/hedging but keep grammar structure, classical register
wenyan-full Maximum classical terseness. Fully 文言文. 80-90% character reduction. Classical sentence patterns, verbs precede objects, subjects often omitted, classical particles (之/乃/為/其)
wenyan-ultra Extreme abbreviation while keeping classical Chinese feel. Maximum compression, ultra terse

Read the full file on GitHub · 78 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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 · 78 lines · 102 tokens per session scan A 5e30bb56afbd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

caveman is a skill published in the GitHub repository john-data-chen/hermes-agent-backup (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 102 tokens to every session and 1,245 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 80% identical to caveman, differing in 24 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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