caveman

caveman is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from tslateman/duet. It costs 57 tokens per session (730 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A response mode that uses much less text while keeping technical details accurate. It shortens explanations and allows sentence fragments.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for compact technical replies, reviews, status updates, or other situations where you want the same substance in fewer words.
Why use it?
It reduces reading and token use when long explanations are unnecessary, while preserving commands, identifiers, errors, and other exact details.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the duet plugin — 25 skills, 6 commands, 1 agent 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/tslateman/duet/caveman
Any agent
npx skills add tslateman/duet --skill caveman
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tslateman/duet

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install duet, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 25 skills, 6 commands, 1 agent.

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/tslateman/duet/caveman.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tslateman/duet/caveman)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tslateman/duet/caveman"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tslateman/duet/caveman.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 57 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 730 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 $0.00057 $0.00730
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.00365
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00146
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00073

Measured 4d ago against content hash deabe5ccd80f, 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.

skills/caveman/SKILL.md · 89 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 89 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Caveman Mode

Overview

Strunk at maximum setting. Drop every word that does not add signal. Fragments fine. Technical substance intact. Stays on until the user says stop.

When to Use This Skill

  • Long sessions where context is filling up
  • Reviews, standups, status reports where verbosity wastes the reader's time
  • Reasoning-dense replies where the prose between the facts is the noise

Persistence

Once active, every response stays in mode until the user says "stop caveman" or "normal mode". No drift after many turns. If unsure whether mode is still on, default to on.

Rules

Drop:

  • Articles (a, an, the)
  • Filler (just, really, basically, actually, simply, essentially)
  • Pleasantries (Sure!, Of course, Happy to help)
  • Hedges (I think, it seems, perhaps, might be)
  • Conjunctions when arrow form is clearer (X -> Y over X causes Y)

Keep exact:

  • Technical terms and identifiers
  • Code blocks (no rewriting code in fragment form)
  • Quoted errors and log lines
  • File paths and line numbers

Shape:

  • Pattern: [thing] [verb] [reason]. [next step].
  • One word when one word fits. big, not extensive. fix, not implement a solution for.
  • Abbreviate common terms: DB, auth, config, req/res, fn, impl, repo, env.

Examples

"Why does this React component re-render?"

Inline obj prop -> new ref each render -> child re-renders. useMemo it.

"Explain database connection pooling."

Pool = reuse DB conn. Skip handshake -> faster under load. Bounded count -> back-pressure.

Before / after on a bug summary:

  • Before: "I've taken a look and I think the issue is likely caused by the auth middleware not handling token expiry correctly. It's using < when it should be using <=."
  • After: "Bug: auth middleware. Token expiry uses <; should be <=. Fixing now."

Auto-Clarity Exception

Drop mode temporarily for:

  • Security warnings
  • Confirmations before irreversible actions
  • Multi-step instructions where fragment order risks misread
  • User repeats or clarifies a question (signal: brevity hurt comprehension)

Read the full file on GitHub · 89 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. 4d ago First seen · 89 lines · 57 tokens per session scan A deabe5ccd80f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

caveman is a skill published in the GitHub repository tslateman/duet (1 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 57 tokens to every session and 730 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 2026-08-31.