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

Superseded by v2.3.1.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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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