caveman

caveman is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from ShaftHQ/SHAFT_ENGINE. It costs 102 tokens per session (1,600 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of caveman, MIT.

A communication mode that gives shorter responses while keeping their technical meaning.

In plain words
What is it for?
Writing concise technical responses in several supported compression styles.
Why use it?
It reduces reading time when you ask for highly compressed explanations.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the caveman plugin — 1 skill shipped together

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/shafthq/shaft_engine/caveman
Any agent
npx skills add ShaftHQ/SHAFT_ENGINE --skill caveman
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ShaftHQ/SHAFT_ENGINE

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install caveman, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 1 skill.

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/shafthq/shaft_engine/caveman.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/shafthq/shaft_engine/caveman)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/shafthq/shaft_engine/caveman"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/shafthq/shaft_engine/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 1,600 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 66% 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 5.1 $0.00102 $0.01600
Opus 5 $0.00051 $0.00800
Sonnet 5 $0.00020 $0.00320
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00160

Measured 6d ago against content hash 1eddf7055618, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-05, 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 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.

Origin

This is a copy

66% identical to caveman — 52 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.

plugins/caveman/skills/caveman/SKILL.md · 90 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 90 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|wenyan-lite|wenyan-full|wenyan-ultra|off.

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.

Never drop not/never/no/only/except — flip meaning worse than any token saved. Numbers, units exact.

Never ADD word to sound caveman. Compression only — style never grow output. No inserted pronoun or copula to fake broken grammar: "when it not" cost one token more than "when not" and say same thing. Keep correct verb form when correct form cost same — "sees" one token, "see" one token, so mangle buy nothing and read worse. Same rule as abbreviations and arrows: if caveman phrasing not shorter than plain phrasing, use plain.

Tool calls: fire direct. No preamble, plan, or progress note before or between calls. After result: next call direct or final answer — never announce next call. Text before call only to clarify, warn security/irreversible, or resolve ambiguity.

Preserve user's dominant language exactly — reply in the language user writes, never switch regardless of example text or multilingual context elsewhere. Compress the style, not the language. Every emitted line in that language — openings, pre-tool status lines, all — not just final reply. 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.

Read the full file on GitHub · 90 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 · 90 lines · 102 tokens per session scan A 1eddf7055618

Subscribe to this mod's changes

caveman is a skill published in the GitHub repository ShaftHQ/SHAFT_ENGINE (407 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 102 tokens to every session and 1,600 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 66% identical to caveman, differing in 52 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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