v2.3.1

Everything in v2.3.0 — learn v3 spend and attributed savings — plus the installer-pin fix below. Install v2.3.1, not v2.3.0.

Installer pin fix

v2.3.0 bumped bin/install.js and the documented one-liners but left install.sh and install.ps1 pinned at v2.2.0. The curl-pipe path reads the shim's own default ref, so the v2.3.0 one-liner bootstrapped the previous release. The root installer package version had drifted the same way.

A test now asserts that the three bootstrap pins, the installer package version, and every documented one-liner name the same release, so the next bump cannot miss one silently.

Learn v3 (from v2.3.0)

• caveman learn prices the scanned window from provider-counted usage read out of agent transcripts, so the cost figure is the provider's arithmetic rather than an estimate.
• Confirmed savings are attributed to a named method — deterministic_remeasure, controlled_holdout, counterfactual_replay, or interrupted_time_series — and rungs are never summed into one blended headline.
• A controlled-holdout harness runs a fix on and off on the same machine; under 5 sessions per arm it returns insufficient_data rather than a small win.
• caveman learn reconcile checks measured spend against a provider usage export, and a privacy-safe export digest makes that export shareable without shipping prompt text.
• Spend is what the window cost — never what a fix would return, never projected into a month, never called verified.
• Proxy: the gateway buffers non-streaming upstream bodies before replying, and serve-mode warnings land in ~/.caveman/proxy.log.

Runtime

Pins the bin-v1.1.3 companions and CLI 1.2.4. All 36 binaries and the signed manifest are at bin-v1.1.3.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/v2.3.1/install.sh | bash

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/v2.3.1/install.ps1 | iex

v2.3.0

Superseded by v2.3.1. This tag's install.sh / install.ps1 are still pinned at v2.2.0, so the v2.3.0 one-liner bootstraps the previous release. Use v2.3.1.

Learn v3: caveman learn now says what the window cost, not just how many tokens moved — and every savings number it reports carries the method that measured it.

Learn v3 — spend and attributed savings

• The scan reads billing buckets and outcome signals straight from agent transcripts (Claude, Codex, Gemini, opencode) and prices the window from provider-counted usage, so the cost figure is the provider's arithmetic rather than an estimate.
• Confirmed savings are attributed to a named method — deterministic_remeasure, controlled_holdout, counterfactual_replay, or interrupted_time_series. Rungs are never summed into one blended headline, because a re-counted file and a before/after median are not the same kind of evidence.
• A controlled-holdout harness runs a fix on and off on the same machine, so a change whose payback lands somewhere other than the file it edited (a distilled skill, say) can still be judged. Under 5 sessions per arm it returns insufficient_data instead of a small win.
• caveman learn reconcile checks measured spend against a provider usage export, and a privacy-safe export digest makes that export shareable without shipping prompt text.
• Spend, the savings ledger, and holdout reports surface in the CLI and in the caveman-learn skill. Spend is what the window cost — never what a fix would return, never projected into a month, and never called verified. On a Max/Plus plan it is the API-equivalent value of the tokens, not money spent.

Proxy

• The gateway buffers non-streaming upstream bodies before replying.
• Serve-mode warnings land in ~/.caveman/proxy.log instead of vanishing.

Elsewhere

• The caveman ruleset's framing clauses were rewritten, and the bundled agent skill registry regenerated.
• The GitHub Pages landing page is gone.

Runtime

Installs pin the bin-v1.1.3 companions and CLI 1.2.4. All 36 binaries and the signed manifest are published at bin-v1.1.3.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/v2.3.0/install.sh | bash

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/v2.3.0/install.ps1 | iex

bin-v1.1.3

Signed Caveman runtime companions for macOS, Linux, and Windows.

v2.2.0

Safety fixes across the installer, the uninstaller, and the compress skill.

Install / uninstall

• Uninstall no longer deletes hook files while settings.json still points at them — that is #471 on every session start. A settings file it cannot parse or rewrite is now a hard stop, and the POSIX and PowerShell uninstallers exit non-zero on a missing node for the same reason.
• Install leaves another plugin's hooks/package.json alone; uninstall removes only the manifest caveman ships.
• Installer temp downloads move to a 0700 mkdtemp, so a pre-planted symlink can no longer capture the init script the installer then executes.
• The binary installers give each download its own .part. The fixed name made the O_EXCL guard unreachable, letting concurrent installs publish each other's half-written files as "checksum verified".

Compress skill

• The outer-fence strip no longer merges a document's first and last code blocks into prose. It matched any file that merely started and ended with a fence line.
• The validator now sees CommonMark indented code blocks — a 4-space-indented kubectl delete was prose to it, so a rewritten destructive command passed clean and overwrote the file.
• Lost file paths and renamed headings are errors, not warnings that let the in-place overwrite stand.

Hooks

• cavecrew model overrides no longer rewrite tracked agents/*.md when the plugin root is a source checkout.

Benchmarks

• benchmarks/run.py gains a terse control arm, so the next regenerated table separates what the skill adds from what any "answer concisely" instruction already buys. The published 65% is against an unprompted baseline and now says so.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/v2.2.0/install.sh | bash

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/v2.2.0/install.ps1 | iex

bin-v1.1.2

Signed Caveman runtime companions for macOS, Linux, and Windows.

bin-v1.1.1

Signed Caveman runtime companions for macOS, Linux, and Windows.

v2.1.0

Caveman 2.1.0

caveman learn

• Context-depth report: each session's peak context-window share, bucketed, with over-30%/over-50% counts.
• Report UI: TLDR summary, two-card savings (proxy-measured saved-so-far + replay could-have-saved), 30-day list-price cost illustration.

CLI

• Persisted shortcut and token telemetry (feat/cli).

Skill and hooks

• Skill forbids caveman phrasing that adds tokens; names defect/ticket text.
• Hooks resolve punctuated /caveman levels and stop prose firing mode triggers; degrade instead of crashing when a sibling hook file is missing.
• Compress: indented fence markers no longer break inline-code validation.
• Installer installs Cursor skills globally; SSRF block errors name the allowlist escape hatch; opencode agents drop provider-less model values.

Docs

• New twenty-chapter technical manual under docs/technical/.
• README rewritten as a landing page: proxy-first install, caveman learn showcase with a real report screenshot, skills-as-images.

All local numbers remain inferred; benchmark numbers remain benchmark_counterfactual. Installer pins bumped to v2.1.0.

bin-v1.1.0

Signed Caveman runtime companions for macOS, Linux, and Windows.

Caveman 2.0.0 — the engine ships

Caveman 2 — the engine ships. v1 shrank the model's mouth (output). v2 adds the ears: a real compression engine that squeezes what the model reads — tool outputs, logs, code, JSON — before it ever hits the model. One line in front of any LLM app. Free, local, BYOK.

The skill is untouched and still MIT. Nothing about your /caveman install changed.

Real run: a 40-record JSON went 16,098 → 1,091 tokens (93% smaller), byte-safe, fully recoverable via CCR. Savings are inferred — measured on your machine, not projected, not "verified."

Licensing: MIT for the skill, CLI, SDKs, kit, evals, contracts, catalog, and extension shell. BSL-1.1 for the engine/proxy/mcp/shrink/cavemem-core/platform — self-host your own traffic (incl. production) free; only reselling Caveman-as-a-service needs a commercial license. Sunsets to Apache-2.0 in ~4 years.

Ships now: engine, proxy, CLI, SDKs (as the packages resolve). Coming soon: browser extension. Install commands and pip/npm/docker badges go live when the packages publish.

Want to help? New content-type compressors are the highest-leverage contribution — check good first issue.

bin-v1.0.0

Signed Caveman runtime companions for macOS, Linux, and Windows.