Token Usage HIGH

[shahriyardx]

I’ve been using the Claude Code CLI with a DeepSeek API key, and the token usage there was surprisingly low compared to DeepSeek TUI. DeepSeek TUI is costing me almost 3× more for similar workflows, probably because I was using the Caveman Skill setup in Claude Code.

Is there any equivalent mechanism or optimization in DeepSeek TUI that can reduce token usage while maintaining similar performance?

[ashargall]

What's preventing you from adding the caveman skill directly to deepseek-tui?

[adambhun]

Tried making caveman work with v0.9.0. The root cause isn't the skill itself — it's that user-level communication preferences don't propagate to sub-agents. Tested five approaches:

• constitution.json working_style — too weak (advisory-only, bottom of hierarchy)
• Project AGENTS.md — sub-agents don't pick it up
• Custom Fleet profile — not auto-discovered by profile parameter
• fork_context: true — works but leaks parent conversation (unusable)
• Direct prompt injection — works but manual, impractical

The hierarchy gap: system prompt (role + SUMMARY/EVIDENCE format) sits at top, unchangeable. User preferences sit at bottom. Caveman or any style directive can't cross that gap.

Any of these platform features would fix it: (1) constitution entries at equal rank to role prompt, (2) auto-discovery for custom Fleet profiles with a default profile config, (3) skill propagation from parent to sub-agents.

I'll see what comes out of Issue #4195 before I make more noise about this though.

[Hmbown]

This is very helpful - thank you guys so much

[MaeuRodrig]

rtk is another saving token tool.
How is this being addressed?
are @adambhun test the last versions?

[giancarlocp]

• Doing "reverse engineering" to other tool.
  how do CodeWhale manage/structure the fixed part in the context (at first) to leverage token cache?