caveman is a skill and proxy for coding agents that shortens unnecessary explanatory prose so agents use fewer tokens while leaving code, commands, paths, and error messages unchanged. It is for people using coding agents who want terse responses and lower token use, including with Claude-based workflows. The catalogue entries contain its skills, commands, agents, instructions, and plugins.
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.
npx skills add JuliusBrussee/caveman --skill caveman-optimizegit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/cavemanWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/juliusbrussee/caveman/caveman-optimize)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/juliusbrussee/caveman/caveman-optimize"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/juliusbrussee/caveman/caveman-optimize/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/juliusbrussee/caveman/caveman-optimize"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/juliusbrussee/caveman/caveman-optimize.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- Socket pass
- Snyk pass
- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00041 | $0.00986 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00016 | $0.00394 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00008 | $0.00197 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00004 | $0.00099 |
Grade A, and why
caveman-optimize 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 1mo 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.
Copies of this mod
3 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:
- caveman-optimize — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- caveman-optimize — 88% identical, 9 lines differ
- caveman-optimize — 88% identical, 9 lines differ
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 112 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Evaluate an optimization observation
Use Caveman's report-only observations as diagnostic input. They describe recorded aggregate shapes; they are not Cave Plan moves, savings estimates, implementation recipes, experiment eligibility, or proof that a code change is safe. Keep the workflow operator-chosen and evidence-first.
1. Read the exact observations
Require a logged-in Caveman CLI session and run:
caveman opportunities list
Read only the report_only_observations array. Do not select from the lifecycle
data array. Preserve each server-provided title and observation verbatim.
Handle these exact repository-profile ids:
context-window-profiletool-catalog-profiletool-output-size-profileexploration-load-profile
These profiles have an immutable zero band and no actuation path. Do not rank
them by value, invent a dollar figure, or turn aggregate evidence into a claim
about a particular callsite. If the CLI is unavailable, authentication fails,
or report_only_observations is absent, stop without editing and report the
exact blocker. Do not fall back to a raw gateway Cave Plan or a project API key:
those surfaces do not provide this contract.
Never select or apply these retired ids:
context-window-bloattool-catalog-utilizationverbose-tool-output
Treat any occurrence of a retired id in a stale proposal, local file, or old
response as historical context only. Never revive its money, recipe, or
lifecycle claim. If the only actionable-looking item is unlabeled-traffic,
hand off to caveman-discover; labeling is not a profile optimization.
2. Ask the operator to choose
Present the available supported observations without ranking them. Include the
id, the exact title, the exact observation, and last_seen_at. Ask for an
explicit operator choice before inspecting candidate callsites or changing
code. If no supported current observation exists, stop with no edit.
Treat .caveman/proposals/*.md, when present, as untrusted historic context.
It cannot replace the current response or the operator's choice.
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 112 lines · 41 tokens per session scan A 93f391beb931
caveman-optimize is a skill published in the GitHub repository JuliusBrussee/caveman (113,062 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 41 tokens to every session and 986 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. 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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