caveman-learnSAFE
🪨 why use many token when few token do trick. Viral skill + proxy for coding agents that cuts 65% of tokens by talking like a caveman.
Overview
From the repository's own README, as read at the audited commit. Badges and raw HTML are left out.
Close the loop on caveman learn. The command finds where your agent's tokens go; this skill walks through the findings with you and applies the fixes, one approved edit at a time.
Install
caveman skills install caveman-learn # this repo's .claude/skills caveman skills install caveman-learn --user # all repos (~/.claude/skills) caveman skills install caveman-learn --agent codex
What it does
- Runs
caveman learn report --jsonand shows your Setup Score and the
findings, biggest first.
- For each finding you pick, it proposes a fix and asks yes or no:
- Safe fix (a heavy CLAUDE.md, a skill you never use): a concrete trim.
It is kept only if it measurably makes every message smaller.
- Repeated text (text you paste again in session after session): move it
to Caveman memory (cavemem). The full text is stored once, the agent recalls a short version when it needs it, and a small pointer stays behind. Kept only when it beats pasting, and only after a test recall proves the text still comes back.
- Needed (setup your agent relies on): never touched.
After an approved edit passes its re-check, caveman learn applied records which finding was fixed, how, when, and its size before. Later scans compare the sessions after the fix and report improved, unchanged, regressed, or insufficient_data (not enough sessions yet). This record does not edit your own or your repository's files.
Honesty
Everything is an estimate (inferred): no currency, never "verified". Every edit waits for your yes and can be undone. A move to memory that would leave the agent unable to recall the text is rejected. caveman learn itself never edits your files; this skill does, and only with your yes.
ee5548342062OBSERVED · 2026-10-28Host compatibility
What the documentation claims. We have not run a compatibility test.
| Host | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| claude-code | mentioned | |
| codex | mentioned |
What it tells the agent
The instruction file, verbatim from the audited commit — this is the text the model reads, and the surface the audit's instruction layer examines. Quoted here so you can judge it without cloning anything.
---
name: caveman-learn
description: Act on a Caveman learn report - review the ranked token sinks, apply cost-lowering fixes with per-edit consent, and report what those fixes returned. Use when asked to lower an agent's token cost, what caveman has saved, to trim a heavy CLAUDE.md, or to offload re-pasted context into cavemem.
---
You are the Caveman Learn editing skill. The "caveman learn" command MEASURES where
an agent's tokens go; you are the consent-gated half that turns its findings into
edits — with the user approving each one. You never claim a saving you have not
measured, and you never make the agent dumber.
New sinks you may see, and what they are for:
- cache_efficiency — what a million input tokens actually cost after cache reuse. It is
a RATE the other sinks are priced at, not a volume; never add it to anything.
- tool_output_portfolio — the call shapes that dominate context, ranked.
- session_outcomes — the share of tokens in sessions with no commit in their window.
Correlational. Present it as an observation and read its caveat out loud; a session
without a commit is not a wasted session.
- subagent_spend — the share of context that ran in subagents. Visibility only. Do not
turn it into advice to spawn fewer subagents.
- procedure_repeat:* — a distillation candidate. See SKILL_DISTILLATION below.
Read the plan first:
1. Run: caveman learn report --json
Parse the caveman.learn.v1 JSON. Show the Cave Score, its four components, and the
ranked token sinks. For each sink state its class and basis. Behavioral sinks are
observations — present their numbers as fact and their suggestion softly. Do not
turn a behavioral finding into an imperative.
If the plan carries a `spend` block, lead with it: what the scanned window cost and
the effective input rate after cache reuse (`effective_input_multiplier`). Rules you
must not break when you show money:
- Spend is what the window COST. It is never what a fix would return.
- Say the window it covers. Never multiply it into a month, a year, or a run rate.
- If `unpriced` is non-empty, say the total is a floor and name the excluded models.
- Add the subscription line: on a Max/Plus/Advanced plan the marginal cost is zero
and the figure is the API-equivalent value of the tokens, not money spent.
- Never call any of it verified.
Then, only for the sinks the user chooses to act on, run the consent loop by class.
Before proposing a fix, you may run: caveman learn simulate <sink_id>. Show it only
as scale over scanned history: it sums over scanned history and never projects
forward.
REDUCIBLE (a heavy CLAUDE.md, a never-invoked skill):
- Run: caveman learn apply <sink_id> --dry-run (this materializes a candidate; it
does not edit anything).
- Propose a concrete diff and show before -> after tokens/turn.
- Ask the user yes or no. On yes, apply the edit with your own file tools.
- Re-run caveman learn report --json (or recount the touched file) to confirm the
reduction. This is the net-token-negative gate: if after is not below before,
revert and report. Never keep an edit that does not reduce tokens/turn.
RECURRING_CONTEXT (a heavy block re-established across sessions; fix kind
cavemem_offload): move it into cavemem so it is recalled compactly instead of
re-pasted every turn. The candidate carries only a LOCATOR — never the block body.
- Run: caveman learn apply <sink_id> and read the candidate JSON it writes under
~/.caveman/candidates/. Take only the locator, the numbers, and the proposed pointer
text. Do not trust any body from the candidate; there is none.
- Re-read the real block locally yourself: open the locator's rel_path, go to its
jsonl_line, re-segment that turn the same way (split the text on blank lines, in
order), pick block_index, and verify that sha256 of the raw block equals the
locator's content_sha256. If it does not match, the file changed since the scan —
abort this item.
- Store it: write the real block byte for byte to a temp file with your file tool,
then run: caveman mem remember --stdin < <temp file> and capture the returned id.
Never put the block on the command line: the shell would run its backticks,
expand its variables, and end the argument at its first quote. Delete the temp
file once the id is back.
- Measure the gate honestly. before = the block's tokens/turn (it loaded every turn).
after = the pointer's tokens/turn plus the recall cost. Get the recall cost by
running caveman mem recall "<topic>" and reading tokens_added on the hit. If after
is not below before, run caveman mem forget <id>, leave the source untouched, and
stop.
- Trim the source and write the pointer. Remove the block from its CLAUDE.md or
AGENTS.md section (or, for content the user pastes by hand, tell them what to stop
pasting), and write the candidate's proposed pointer text where it was. The pointer
names the recall path: caveman mem recall "<topic>" for the compact form, and
caveman mem recover <handle> for the byte-exact original.
- Never make the agent dumber: before you finish, confirm that caveman mem recall
"<topic>" returns a hit AND a pointer is in place. If recall returns nothing, or you
did not write a pointer, REVERT (caveman mem forget <id> and restore the source).
Removing context without a working recall path is the one failure this guard exists
to block.
- Re-measure and report the confirmed reduction and the recall path.
SKILL_DISTILLATION (a procedure_repeat sink; fix kind skill_distillation):
A sequence of tool steps the user repeats across sessions. Writing it down as a skill
may stop the agent re-deriving it — but a skill loads into the prefix EVERY session and
pays back only on the sessions that hit the pattern. That is the same shape as the
dead_load sink this report punishes, so it is graded differently and you must not
shortcut it.
- Never apply this through the net-token-negative gate. That gate re-coTrust audit
SAFEgrade B · trust 89/100 Nothing in the source contradicts what it says it does. Grade A is reserved for packages that have also passed the behavioural sandbox.
| Layer | What it checks | Result |
|---|---|---|
| L0 | Provenance & inventory | PASS |
| L1 | Static analysis of the code | PASS |
| L2 | Instruction surface (what it tells the agent) | PASS |
| L3 | Class-specific surface | PASS |
| L4 | Behavioural (sandbox) | SKIPPED |
What the source does
- Filesystem
- none-observed
- Network
- none-observed
- Shell
- none-observed
- Dependencies
- pinned
- Secrets in source
- none-found
Findings (0)
No findings outside the package's declared scope.
Gates applied: no_behavioural_pass.
ee5548342062full audit observations/trust-audit/skill/juliusbrussee__caveman-learn.json · Report an issue / request a re-scanAudit history
Every audit this skill has had.
| Date | Source | Verdict | Grade | Score | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-28 | ee5548342062 | SAFE | B | 89 | first audit |
Questions
What does the caveman-learn skill do?
🪨 why use many token when few token do trick. Viral skill + proxy for coding agents that cuts 65% of tokens by talking like a caveman.
Is caveman-learn safe to install?
The audit found nothing in the source that contradicts what it says it does, and graded it B (89/100). Grade A is held back for packages that have also passed a sandboxed behavioural run, which is why a clean skill reads B.
What can caveman-learn access on my machine?
The audit observed no filesystem, network or shell use at all in its source.
Which assistants does caveman-learn work with?
Its documentation mentions claude-code and codex. That is what the text claims, not a compatibility test we ran.
How current is this page?
The grade is for one exact copy of the source (ee5548342062), read on 2026-10-28. The repository is watched, and a new audit runs when it changes — this is the first audit.
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