caveman-code

About

caveman-code is a terminal coding agent forked from Mario Zechner's pi, modified so that every layer of the interaction pipeline compresses tokens: the model's own replies are constrained into terse 'caveman grammar', tool outputs are truncated to per-tool budgets, repeated file reads return deduplicated stubs, and an optional Rust companion binary further compresses bash output. The agent remains fully compatible with the Claude Code ecosystem — settings.json, hooks, commands, skills, subagents, and .mcp.json are read directly — so users can switch agents without reconfiguring their setup. Benchmark results published in the repository report roughly 2x token reduction against Codex CLI on identical tasks. Subagents run worktree-isolated in parallel, and a read-only plan mode gates model actions until an explicit /act. Development has paused as of August 2026; the maintainer recommends the newer caveman wrapper for ongoing use, though caveman-code remains installable via npm and functions as documented.