JuliusBrussee

When to delegate to `cavecrew-investigator` (locate code), `cavecrew-builder` (1-2 file edit) or `cavecrew-reviewer` (diff review) instead of working inline or using `Explore`. Their output is compressed, so main context lasts longer.

Compress a memory file such as CLAUDE.md or a todo list into caveman format to save input tokens, keeping a readable backup. Trigger: /caveman-compress.

Ultra-compressed communication mode that cuts output tokens while keeping technical accuracy. Levels: lite, full, ultra and the wenyan variants. Use for /caveman, "caveman mode", "talk like caveman", "be brief" or "less tokens".

Show real token usage and estimated savings for the current session. Reads directly from the Claude Code session log — no AI estimation. Triggers on /caveman-stats. Output is injected by the mode-tracker hook; the model itself does not compute the numbers.

When to delegate to `cavecrew-investigator` (locate code), `cavecrew-builder` (1-2 file edit) or `cavecrew-reviewer` (diff review) instead of working inline or using `Explore`. Their output is compressed, so main context lasts longer.

Write a Conventional Commits message compressed to intent only. Use for "write a commit", "commit message", /commit or /caveman-commit.

Compress a memory file such as CLAUDE.md or a todo list into caveman format to save input tokens, keeping a readable backup. Trigger: /caveman-compress.

Quick-reference card for caveman modes, skills and commands. Trigger: /caveman-help or "caveman help".

Compressed code review - one line per finding with location, problem and fix. Use for /caveman-review, "review this PR", or "review the diff".

Ultra-compressed communication mode that cuts output tokens while keeping technical accuracy. Levels: lite, full, ultra and the wenyan variants. Use for /caveman, "caveman mode", "talk like caveman", "be brief" or "less tokens".

Show real token usage and estimated savings for the current session, read from the session log. Trigger: /caveman-stats.

Turn a Caveman optimization observation into an operator-chosen candidate with a paired baseline evaluation. Use when asked to inspect or evaluate a Caveman optimization report. Needs explicit approval.

Restructure code while preserving behavior. Use for extraction, consolidation, ownership moves, or cleanup where verification must bracket structural edits.

Wire a repository through the Caveman Cloud gateway so every LLM request is measured, with no behavior change. Use for "set up caveman" or adding LLM spend observability.

Fix bugs and small behavior changes at the narrowest responsible layer. Use when regression proof, preserved surrounding behavior, and task-relevant tests matter.

Build feature work with high overbuilding risk. Use for new behavior, product slices, or integrations where repository reuse, strict scope, and an explicit stop condition matter.

Read-only review of Caveman Cloud evidence: cost, Cave Score, workflows, traces, latency, errors, routing, savings. Use when asked what Caveman found or where LLM spend goes.

Diagnose ambiguous failures before editing. Use for unknown causes, intermittent behavior, performance regressions, or investigations needing evidence-ranked hypotheses.

Find and label every LLM workflow in the repository so Caveman Cloud groups spend by workflow instead of one bucket. Use for "discover workflows" or breaking LLM spend down by workflow.

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.

Implement reversible compatibility-safe transitions. Use for schema, data, API, protocol, configuration, or dependency migrations requiring rollback and preservation proof.

Prove existing work meets acceptance conditions without expanding scope. Use for validation-only tasks, completion checks, focused gate runs, and last-mile proof.

Read-only repository explorer for cold-start orientation, broad cross-file localization, or when a direct search failed. Skip it when the exact file or symbol is already named. Returns path:line citations only; its reads stay out of main context.

Inspect Caveman Cloud's experiment lifecycle and block unsafe execution. Use when asked to start, approve, cancel, promote or roll back a Caveman experiment.

Bug → spec protocol. When a bug is found or a test fails, trace the cause, decide whether a new §V invariant would catch recurrence, append to §B. This is the one non-obvious thing SDD does that plan-then-execute doesn't. Triggers on test failure, bug report, post-mortem, or explicit user ask.

Plan-then-execute implementation against SPEC.md. Native single-thread loop, no sub-agents. On test or build failure, auto-invokes the backprop skill before retrying — a failed verification always considers whether a new §V invariant would prevent recurrence. Triggers when the user asks to build, implement, execute the spec, or tackle a specific §T task (`build §T.3`, `build --next`, `implement next task`, `run the build`). Expects SPEC.md to exist; if not, defers to the spec skill.

Caveman encoding for SPEC.md and spec-adjacent writes. Loaded by /spec, /build, /check. Cuts tokens ~75% vs prose while staying precise. Triggers on any write to SPEC.md or when user says "caveman", "compress this", "be brief".

Read-only drift detector. Diffs SPEC.md against current code and reports violations grouped by severity. Writes nothing — suggests remedies via the spec or build skills but never invokes them. Triggers when the user asks to check drift, audit the spec, verify invariants, or ask whether code still matches the spec. Phrasings: "check drift", "audit the spec", "does the code still match §V", "check invariants", "spec vs code".

Optional design-improvement pass for when you have spare usage to drain. Finds the shallowest modules in the code the spec touches, researches a deeper design, and proposes refactors that shrink interfaces and hide decisions — behavior held constant, tests green before and after. Proposes §I/§V/§T edits, never silent rewrites. Triggers when the user says "deepen this", "improve the design", "this module feels shallow", "pull complexity down", "use spare budget on the codebase", or invokes /ck:deepen. Leans on the codebase-design skill's deep-module vocabulary when present.

Calibrated interrogation of a fuzzy idea before it becomes a spec. Asks one question at a time, recommends an answer, and lands each answer in §G (goal) or §C (constraints) — unknowns parked as `?` items, never guessed. The cheapest place to kill a bad idea is before §T exists. Triggers when the user has a vague idea, says "grill me", "stress-test this", "challenge my plan", "interview me before I spec", or invokes /ck:grill. Defers the actual write to the spec skill.

Gather external knowledge the spec needs and distill it into §R — the durable research log — so build grounds in facts instead of hallucinating library behavior. Each finding cites a source; unsourced claims are flagged, never written as fact. Triggers when a spec decision hinges on a library/API/best practice the agent is unsure of, when the user says "research this", "what's the best lib for…", "check current best practice", or invokes /ck:research. Defers the §R write to the spec skill.

Adversarial senior review of the spec before any code is written. Constructs a skeptical reviewer whose authority comes from the codebase, §R research, and live best-practice — then tries to REFUTE the spec, not rubber-stamp it. Every finding cites evidence (file:line or source); unverifiable ones are flagged. Survivors harden §V; the run ends in an explicit go / no-go gate. Triggers before building anything high-blast-radius, when the user says "review the spec", "red-team this", "is this plan sound", "senior review", or invokes /ck:review.

Create, amend, or backprop bugs into SPEC.md at repo root. Sole mutator of the project spec. Triggers when the user asks to write a spec, start a new spec, distill a spec from existing code, add invariants, amend sections (§G, §C, §I, §V, §T, §B), or record a bug via backprop. Common phrasings: "write the spec for...", "new spec", "bug: ...", "amend §V.3", "distill spec from code", "spec this idea". Reads and follows FORMAT.md for the caveman encoding rules and pipe-table shape of §T and §B.

Example skill loaded from resources_discover

How to write and maintain DESIGN.md as the visual specification layer for Cavekit projects. Nine-section format, design tokens, accessibility, integration with kits/plans. Use when defining or revising visual identity, importing a third-party design system, or auditing UI code against design tokens.

Cavekit specification-driven development methodology — the Hunt lifecycle (Draft → Architect → Build → Inspect → Monitor) and how to apply it. Use when starting a Cavekit project, structuring an existing codebase as kits/plans, or routing between sub-skills.

Trace bugs and manual fixes back to kits and prompts; fix at the source so the iteration loop can reproduce the fix autonomously. Six-step revision process plus the single-failure backpropagation protocol. Use when a manual hot-fix has been applied, when convergence stalls, or when the same class of bug keeps reappearing.

Validation-first design for Cavekit — every kit requirement must be automatically verifiable. Six-gate validation pipeline, phase gates, merge protocol, completion signals, acceptance criteria patterns. Use when designing acceptance criteria, wiring CI gates, or debugging why an agent is producing output that nobody can verify.

Ultra-compressed communication mode (lite / full / ultra) that cuts token usage ~75% by speaking like caveman while keeping full technical accuracy. Use when the user requests "caveman mode", "less tokens", "be brief", or when output budget is tight.

Scaffold a complete cave plugin bundle — generates .cave-plugin/plugin.json manifest and the standard directory structure (commands/, skills/, agents/, themes/, hooks/). Use when a user wants to create, publish, or package a cave plugin for the marketplace. Triggered by "create a plugin", "scaffold a plugin", "/plugin create", or "new cave plugin".

Install a per-turn canary signal (e.g. starting every reply with the user's name and a turn counter) so silent context degradation becomes visible the moment it happens, and run a recovery protocol when the canary trips. Use when the user mentions a "canary", "context canary", or "canary check", asks to detect context rot / compaction / drift, says "you stopped using my name" or "did you lose context", asks "how degraded is your context", or wants an early-warning system for long agent sessions.

Calibrated grilling session for stress-testing a plan, design, idea, or decision. First assesses the user's topic knowledge, confidence, and desired pressure level, then asks one question at a time with recommended answers. Use when user says "grill me", "stress-test this", "challenge my plan", "interview me", or wants a plan probed without being overwhelmed.

Authoritative guide for implementing stunning, accessible, performant UI. Synthesizes design engineering philosophy, accessibility standards, animation principles, spatial design, typography, color systems, and component craft into a single actionable reference. Complements the design-system skill (which covers DESIGN.md spec writing) by covering the HOW of implementation. Trigger phrases: "build UI", "create component", "landing page", "make it look good", "frontend", "design", "polish UI", "implement design", "make it beautiful", "UI implementation", "component styling", "animation", "accessibility"

Adversarial senior-engineer review for agent-generated plans, designs, and architectures. Treats the current output as junior work, constructs a senior reviewer whose domain expertise comes from live codebase research plus web research of current best practices, diagnoses altitude failures (too vague or too granular), then rewrites the plan into a scoped, state-of-the-art version. Use when the user says "junior to senior", "senior review", "review this like a staff engineer", when a plan feels hand-wavy or lost in details, or before committing to any agent-written plan.

Finds and finishes the last 20% of a built solution — the experiential layer agents skip: what the output actually reads like, which pages or screens should exist, first-run and empty states, opinionated defaults, the golden path. Use when planning any build so the magic gets specced as concretely as the plumbing, before calling any build "done", when a solution works but feels like a demo, or when the user says "last 20%", "finish this", "make it actually good", "is this actually done", or "why does this feel flat".

Run a spec-driven agent loop where coding tasks live as markdown specs that move through inbox → active → archive, get implemented by Claude Code or Codex, and pass a review gate before they count as done. Use when the user mentions "loop factory", a "spec-driven loop", an "agent factory", wants repeatable/reviewable agent work, or when a repo has a factory/specs/inbox or factory/specs/active directory. Also covers installing and scaffolding the loop-factory CLI into a project.

De-slop pass for any text. Scans for the statistical fingerprints of AI writing (negative parallelism / "not X but Y", em-dash density, rule-of-three, false ranges, puffery vocabulary, uniform cadence, hedged both-sidesing), rewrites by meaning, then re-scans until the text is clean and sits in the right register for its genre: academic article, tweet, reddit post, email, blog, docs, marketing. Use when the user says "deslopify", "deslop", "de-slop this", "remove the AI tells", "humanize this", "make this not sound like AI", or invokes /deslopify. Also use before publishing any agent-drafted prose.