juliusbrussee/caveman
🪨 why use many token when few token do trick — Claude Code skill that cuts 65% of tokens by talking like caveman
How caveman is put together
Caveman is a token-reduction toolkit for AI coding agents, written primarily in Go (module github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman) with a Node.js installer layer. The Go core is an 'engine' that detects payload types (json/log/code/diff/a11y/text) and compresses them while storing originals in a CCR (compressed-content-recovery) store backed by SQLite, exposing verbs (learn, shrink, browse, mem, convert) plus a line-delimited stdio MCP server and a local proxy that sits between coding agents and LLM providers. A Node CLI (@caveman-ai/cli dependency, bin/install.js) detects installed agents and wires hooks/statusline into agent settings files. A Chrome DevTools Protocol driver (browse) serves compressed accessibility-tree snapshots with UID-based actions and byte-exact recovery.
Languages
Frameworks
Datastores
Infrastructure
Major components
engine
Detects content type of payloads and compresses them (json/log/code/diff/a11y/toon) while writing originals to the CCR recovery store and reporting token accounting.
engine/ccr
SQLite-backed store of original bytes keyed by recovery handles, including parent-directory security validation on POSIX.
mcp
Reusable line-delimited stdio JSON-RPC MCP server adapter (initialize/tools list/call, batching, panic containment, size caps) dispatching to tool sets.
browse
Chrome-driven browsing sessions exposing four MCP tools (snapshot/act/eval/recover) over compressed accessibility trees with UID target caching and URL scheme validation.
mem
Durable memory store with BM25 relevance scoring for remember/recall operations.
proxy
Local proxy that forwards agent traffic to LLM providers through the compression engine, passing provider auth through unchanged.
rewriter
Prompt/output rewriting layer with gating and token counting for the skill-side compression behavior.
bin/installer (Node)
Cross-platform installer that detects 30+ AI agents and idempotently manages Caveman hooks/statusline entries in agent settings.json files.
A quiet week of cleanup, tightening how the tool analyzes your project's source code.
5 weeksWeek of 2026-08-24
Week of 2026-08-24latest
A quiet week of cleanup, tightening how the tool analyzes your project's source code.
Week of 2026-08-17
The biggest week yet: a new savings-measurement system ('learn v3') shipped alongside dozens of stability fixes and two releases.
Week of 2026-08-10
Caveman 2.0.0 launched with telemetry on by default, followed by a large batch of cross-platform fixes and documentation rewrites.
Week of 2026-08-03
A light documentation-focused week polishing the README ahead of the big 2.0 launch.
Week of 2026-07-20
Foundational fixes landed: preventing Windows data loss, surfacing real net savings, and running the full test suite on every change.
Over the past few weeks this project shipped a major version 2.0 of its CLI tool and then spent the following weeks stabilizing it: fixing Windows data-loss bugs, hardening the installer, and turning on usage telemetry. The busiest week (Aug 17) added a new 'learn' reporting system that measures how much money the tool saves versus what it costs, plus a wave of reliability fixes across the proxy and installer. The most recent week was a quiet cleanup focused on making sure the tool's code analysis only trusts direct evidence from your own project files.
Week by week
2026-08-24A quiet week of cleanup, tightening how the tool analyzes your project's source code.latest2 changes
Fix
Code intelligence now requires direct evidence
The proxy's repo-analysis feature was scoped so it only draws conclusions from your actual project source files, rather than guessing from unrelated material.
Chore
General housekeeping
Routine cleanup commits kept the codebase tidy with no user-facing changes.
2026-08-17The biggest week yet: a new savings-measurement system ('learn v3') shipped alongside dozens of stability fixes and two releases.6 changes
Feature
Savings ledger and spend reports
The tool now tracks what you spend on AI providers and attributes confirmed cost savings to specific techniques, showing both in a learn report.
Feature
Controlled-holdout experiments
A new experiment harness lets the tool prove its savings are real by comparing against a control group where the optimization is switched off.
Feature
Privacy-safe usage export
You can now reconcile the tool's measured spending against your provider's billing export using a privacy-safe digest.
Fix
Self-healing local proxy
If the local proxy dies mid-session, the CLI can now restart it instead of waiting until the next session starts.
Fix
Safer installs and updates
Concurrent downloads no longer collide, pinned versions can't silently drift, and the uninstaller won't delete hook files that settings still reference.
Chore
Two releases cut
Version 2.3.0 of the main package and CLI 1.2.5 were published, including a fix that buffers non-streaming responses from upstream servers.
2026-08-10Caveman 2.0.0 launched with telemetry on by default, followed by a large batch of cross-platform fixes and documentation rewrites.6 changes
Feature
Caveman 2.0.0 release
A unified CLI shipped combining the engine, proxy, and SDKs into one installable package.
Feature
Telemetry on by default
Usage telemetry is now enabled out of the box, with an opt-out flag and clear disclosure to users.
Fix
Windows reliability fixes
Hook paths are now properly quoted, executable shims preferred, and test suites made deterministic on Windows.
Fix
Security and safety fixes
Server-side request forgery protections got clearer error messages, and the ~/.caveman folder is now owner-only for privacy.
Docs
README and docs overhaul
The README was rewritten around the learn and proxy features, with a technical manual added and install instructions simplified.
Fix
Compression validation fixes
Fixed edge cases where indented or inline code markers could break the compression validator or eat document content.
2026-08-03A light documentation-focused week polishing the README ahead of the big 2.0 launch.3 changes
Docs
Clearer token-savings explanation
The README now explains how much token savings to expect depending on the type of workload.
Docs
Simplified install section
Installation instructions were streamlined and clarified around coding runs.
Chore
Release pinning and badges
The installer reference was pinned to v1.10.0 and README badges were updated.
2026-07-20Foundational fixes landed: preventing Windows data loss, surfacing real net savings, and running the full test suite on every change.5 changes
Fix
Windows data-loss prevention
Compression now writes files atomically in UTF-8 on Windows, stopping a bug that could corrupt or lose file contents.
Feature
Net savings stat
Statistics now show net savings after accounting for costs, not just gross savings.
Chore
Full test suite on every push
Continuous integration now runs the complete test suite on every change, catching regressions earlier.
Fix
Installer renamed and hardened
The bin/ directory became cli/ with safer Windows quoting and a cleaner uninstall process.
Fix
Skill language hardening
The caveman skill rules were hardened against negation confusion, silent tool calls, and drifting into other languages.
Dependencies and code review
Dependency advisories
Security Watch
No known advisories across 1 scanned dependencies.
No known advisories in the scanned dependencies.
Code review
No concrete code-level issues confirmed.
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