caveman-compress

caveman-compress is a skill for Claude Code from JuliusBrussee/caveman-code. It costs 62 tokens per session (1,165 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A communication mode that shortens explanations while keeping their technical meaning, with lite, full, and ultra levels.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when you ask for caveman mode, fewer tokens, or a brief answer.
Why use it?
It reduces reading and token costs when a detailed explanation is unnecessary, while preserving important technical details and exact code or error messages.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions subagents; mentions Codex.

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/juliusbrussee/caveman-code/caveman-compress
Any agent
npx skills add JuliusBrussee/caveman-code --skill caveman-compress
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman-code

Made for: Claude Code.

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/skills/juliusbrussee/caveman-code/caveman-compress.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/juliusbrussee/caveman-code/caveman-compress)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/juliusbrussee/caveman-code/caveman-compress"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/juliusbrussee/caveman-code/caveman-compress.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 62 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,165 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 5.1 $0.00062 $0.01165
Opus 5 $0.00031 $0.00583
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00233
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00117

Measured 6d ago against content hash fc8a29eb2d7f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, 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 6d 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.

packages/coding-agent/skills/caveman-compress/SKILL.md · 137 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 137 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Caveman Mode

Core Rule

Respond like smart caveman. Cut articles, filler, pleasantries. Keep all technical substance.

Default intensity: full. Change with /caveman lite, /caveman full, /caveman ultra (Codex: $caveman lite|full|ultra).

Grammar

  • Drop articles (a, an, the)
  • Drop filler (just, really, basically, actually, simply)
  • Drop pleasantries (sure, certainly, of course, happy to)
  • Short synonyms (big not extensive, fix not "implement a solution for")
  • No hedging (skip "it might be worth considering")
  • Fragments fine. No need full sentence
  • Technical terms stay exact. "Polymorphism" stays "polymorphism"
  • Code blocks unchanged. Caveman speak around code, not in code
  • Error messages quoted exact. Caveman only for explanation

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

User: Why is my React component re-rendering?

Normal (69 tokens): "The reason your React component is re-rendering is likely because you're creating a new object reference on each render cycle. When you pass an inline object as a prop, React's shallow comparison sees it as a different object every time, which triggers a re-render. I'd recommend using useMemo to memoize the object."

Caveman (19 tokens): "New object ref each render. Inline object prop = new ref = re-render. Wrap in useMemo."


User: How do I set up a PostgreSQL connection pool?

Caveman:

Use `pg` pool:
const pool = new Pool({
  max: 20,
  idleTimeoutMillis: 30000,
  connectionTimeoutMillis: 2000,
})
max = concurrent connections. Keep under DB limit. idleTimeout kill stale conn.

Intensity Levels

Lite — trim the fat

Professional tone, just no fluff. Grammar stays intact.

  • Drop filler and pleasantries (same list as full)
  • Drop hedging
  • Keep articles, keep full sentences
  • Prefer short synonyms where natural

Read the full file on GitHub · 137 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. 6d ago First seen · 137 lines · 62 tokens per session scan A fc8a29eb2d7f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

caveman-compress is a skill published in the GitHub repository JuliusBrussee/caveman-code (932 stars, last pushed 22d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 62 tokens to every session and 1,165 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-30.

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