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Productivity

Caveman

Makes Claude say less and read less, cutting token use by up to 75% with the same answers.

Open sourceBy Julius Brussee
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What is it?

Why many token when few do trick. Caveman makes Claude answer in a terse, answer-first voice: one idea per sentence, no greeting, no recap. Code, commands, paths and error messages stay untouched, character for character.

Version 4 is six parts in one install. Say less shrinks replies (a 63-token answer becomes 20). Read less compresses logs, JSON and test output before Claude reads them, measured at a third fewer input tokens per session. Auto picks the model and effort for each task, and Blocks keeps the scripts Claude writes so it can rerun them instead of rewriting them.

It has been cited by Adobe Research, A/B tested by JetBrains with no measurable quality loss, and hit number one on Hacker News and GitHub Trending.

Install in Claude Code

Run npx @caveman-ai/cli@latest in your terminal (needs Node 22.13 or newer). It finds Claude Code and your other agents, shows what it will change and switches caveman on. Inside Claude Code use /caveman, /ultracave or /megacave for progressively shorter replies.

Try this prompt

Paste into Claude Code
/caveman why does my React component re-render on every keystroke?

Who it's for

Anyone on a Claude plan who hits usage limits, or who pays per token.

Best for

  • Stretching usage limits
  • Long coding sessions
  • Reading big logs
  • Short answers

Why it made the list

It is the easiest way to stretch a Claude Pro or Max plan further without losing accuracy.

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