Speak Caveman, Save Tokens
You know what burns through your Claude token budget faster than actual coding? Claude talking about the coding.
"I've updated the function to handle the edge case where the user passes a null value. I also refactored the error handling to be more consistent with the pattern established in the rest of the codebase. Additionally, I noticed that..."
Bro. I have eyes. I can see the diff. Why am I even calling you bro? Are we bonding?
Why Caveman Do This
I've been building a personal automation tool. Think n8n-style, block-based workflows. Big project. Now that I think about it, I wouldn't even have the time to devote to something like this if I was coding manually. We've really come far.
But with Anthropic tightening session limits during peak hours, every wasted token started to hurt. If you've been on r/anthropic or r/claudecode lately, you already know the vibe. People are not happy. So I stopped complaining and started optimizing where I actually could: Claude's mouth.
Trick Easy. Brain Small.
I drop it in my CLAUDE.md or tell Claude to save it to its memory.md at the start of a project. The skill is caveman by Julius Brussee, a beautifully simple idea that's racked up nearly 7k stars on GitHub. It tells Claude to be terse, skip narrating file changes I can already see, skip confirming tasks I just asked for, and generally talk like a caveman who values token efficiency above all else.
That's it. That's the whole skill.
Before Talk. After No Talk.
Before:
"I've successfully created the user authentication middleware. It checks for valid JWT tokens in the Authorization header, extracts the user ID, and attaches it to the request object. I also added proper error handling for expired tokens and missing headers. The middleware is exported as a default function that can be used in your route definitions."
After:
"Done. Added auth middleware at
src/middleware/auth.ts."
Same work. Fraction of the tokens.
Less Word, More Think
Tokens cost money. But more importantly, tokens cost context window. Every word Claude spends narrating its git log is a word less it can spend reasoning about your actual problem.
Long conversations hit the context limit faster. Then Claude starts forgetting things. Then you start repeating yourself. Then you both get dumber together. A beautiful downward spiral.
On a block-based project with dozens of node types, connection logic, and UI components, that context window is prime real estate. And with Anthropic rationing peak-hour tokens, the math is simple: less fluff = more work before you hit the wall.
Why Caveman Smile
It's so dumb-simple it almost feels like cheating. No fancy prompt engineering framework. No 200-line system prompt. Just a tiny skill that says "hey, stop talking so much." Saved once, applied everywhere.
Sometimes the best optimizations are just telling the computer to shut up.
Me go now. Code at night. Peak hours bad. Tokens precious. Caveman out.