caveman-learn

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.

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.

Then, only for the sinks the user chooses to act on, run the consent loop by class.

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: caveman mem remember -- "" and capture the returned id. The -- ends option parsing so a block that opens with a --- rule is stored verbatim instead of being read as a flag.
• 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 "" and reading tokens_added on the hit. If after is not below before, run caveman mem forget , 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 "" for the compact form, and caveman mem recover for the byte-exact original.
• Never make the agent dumber: before you finish, confirm that caveman mem recall "" returns a hit AND a pointer is in place. If recall returns nothing, or you did not write a pointer, REVERT (caveman mem forget 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.

LOAD_BEARING: never touch. It appears in the report only so the score stays honest.

Binding rules:

• Consent per edit. No "apply all" that hides the individual diffs.
• Every edit is reversible: report exactly what you changed. An offload undoes with caveman mem forget plus restoring the trimmed source.
• inferred only. Never present a local number as verified, and never attach a currency.
• The analyzer (caveman learn) is read-only. You are the only writer, and only after a yes.

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caveman-learn skill

Close the loop on caveman learn. The command measures where your agent's tokens go; this skill reviews that plan 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

1. Runs caveman learn report --json and shows your Cave Score + ranked token sinks.
2. For each sink you pick, proposes a fix and asks yes/no:
   • reducible (heavy CLAUDE.md, never-invoked skill) → a concrete trim, applied only if it measurably lowers tokens/turn.
   • recurring_context (context you re-establish every session) → offload it to cavemem (cavemem_offload): stored raw, compacted at recall on demand, with a cheap pointer left behind. Applied only when it beats re-pasting, and only after a confirming recall proves the content still comes back.
   • load_bearing → never touched.

Honesty

Everything is inferred — no currency, no "verified". Every edit is consent-gated and reversible, and an offload that would leave the agent unable to recall the content is rejected. The analyzer never edits your files; this skill does, only with your yes.