FAQ — does this conflict with caveman / claude-mem / RTK / my existing CLAUDE.md?

[sravan27]

Short answer: no, and it is designed to coexist.

Existing CLAUDE.md

setup.sh writes a marker-delimited block:

<!-- context-os:start -->
...generated content...
<!-- context-os:end -->

Your existing content is preserved. Re-running setup.sh only rewrites what is between the markers. --uninstall strips the block but leaves everything else intact.

caveman

caveman is excellent for response shaping. We cite their benchmark in our README. If you have caveman-style rules in CLAUDE.md already, they stack with ours.

claude-mem

claude-mem focuses on session memory. Our session memory (hook-based, optional binary) captures decisions into a restart packet before compaction. The two approaches are different — claude-mem persists across sessions via a local database, ours survives compaction and session end via a handoff file. No conflict.

RTK

RTK focuses on output compression. We do similar work via hooks. If you are using RTK, disable our hook-based output compression to avoid double-reducing: set CONTEXT_OS_COMPRESS=0 or remove the PostToolUse entries from .claude/settings.json.

What NOT to stack

• Two different response-shaping systems writing conflicting instructions (one says "no preamble", another says "always preface with a summary"). Pick one.
• Two different output-compression hooks on the same tool event. They will fight.

Our rule of thumb

Context OS bundles the full stack so you do not have to assemble one. But if you already have a working custom setup, use curl ... | bash -s -- --measure first to see what Context OS would add on top. You can then cherry-pick the pieces you want manually instead of running the full installer.

See the comparison

Full side-by-side matrix: https://github.com/sravan27/context-os#why-this-exists