caveman-compress
Compress natural language memory files into caveman-speak to reduce input tokens.
- Removes articles, filler words, hedging, and redundant phrasing while preserving all code blocks, URLs, file paths, technical terms, and markdown structure
- Automatically detects file type, calls Claude for compression, validates output, and retries up to 2 times on errors
- Creates human-readable backup as
<filename>.original.mdbefore overwriting the original file - Triggered via
/caveman-compress <filepath>command or by asking to compress a memory file
Caveman Compress
Purpose
Compress natural language files (CLAUDE.md, todos, preferences) into caveman-speak to reduce input tokens. Compressed version overwrites original. Human-readable backup saved as <filename>.original.md, but NOT beside the source file — it lives in an out-of-tree data dir ($XDG_DATA_HOME/caveman-compress/backups/<parent-dir-name>/, or %LOCALAPPDATA%\caveman-compress\backups\<parent-dir-name>\ on Windows) so skill auto-loaders don't re-ingest it as a live file.
Trigger
/caveman-compress <filepath> or when user asks to compress a memory file.
Process
-
The compression scripts live in
scripts/(adjacent to this SKILL.md). If the path is not immediately available, search forscripts/__main__.pynext to this SKILL.md. -
From the directory containing this SKILL.md, run:
python3 -m scripts <absolute_filepath>