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I benchmarked Claude Code's caveman plugin against "be brief."

maxtaylor.me

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Re: I benchmarked Claude Code's caveman plugin against "be brief."

#11

Post by lofaszvanitt »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #8
lofaszvanitt wrote: post #3

Caveman is useless for me. We are in the year 2026, computers are here to serve me, and bring me comfort. Caveman is a caveman, speaks like an idiot. I don't want to interact with an idiot. It's irritating, and as the article states, an overhyped turd. It is the same idiocy that permeates EV cars. You buy an expensive car to go from A to B and at the same time offer you comfort. When I have to think about using the s…

> I don't want to interact with an idiot. Then why are you using AI? Not a big difference between an articulate idiot and a succinct one.

Have to test its limits.... to cut through the bs. otherwise you'd have to read whitepapers...

Re: I benchmarked Claude Code's caveman plugin against "be brief."

#12

Post by max-t-dev »

eulgro wrote: post #5
lofaszvanitt wrote: post #3

Caveman is useless for me. We are in the year 2026, computers are here to serve me, and bring me comfort. Caveman is a caveman, speaks like an idiot. I don't want to interact with an idiot. It's irritating, and as the article states, an overhyped turd. It is the same idiocy that permeates EV cars. You buy an expensive car to go from A to B and at the same time offer you comfort. When I have to think about using the s…

I enabled it and I had to read carefully to check if it was really active... turns out I never read the words that caveman omits, so to me it makes zero difference.

Yeah, makes sense. The appeal is is more to cut output tokens for cost, than downstream reading experience. But the benchmark suggests it doesn't offer as much benefit as "be brief.".

Re: I benchmarked Claude Code's caveman plugin against "be brief."

#13

Post by ramesh31 »

Caveman sounds clever if you have no idea how LLM reasoning works. Talking through a problem out loud, in depth, is a critical part of how things like Claude Code even get to a result. Those aren't "wasted tokens", they're an integral part of how the LLM reaches a conclusion and completes its chain of reasoning.

Re: I benchmarked Claude Code's caveman plugin against "be brief."

#14

Post by SwellJoe »

ricardobeat wrote: post #7
max-t-dev wrote: post #2

Author here. Caveman is a popular Claude Code plugin that compresses Claude's responses via a custom skill with intensity modes. I wanted to know whether it actually beats the simplest possible alternative, prepending "be brief." to prompts. 24 prompts, 5 arms, judged by a separate Claude against per-prompt rubrics covering required facts, required terms, and dangerous wrong claims to avoid. 120 scored responses, 100…

Thanks for sharing this, really interesting results. Slightly off-topic: it's quite apparent that you've used Claude as an editor for the blog post. Every sentence has been sanded smooth — the rough edges filed off, the voice flattened, the rhythm set to metronome. It doesn't read like writing anymore. It reads like content. Neat little triplets. Tidy paragraphs. A structure so polished it could pass a rubric, but co…

Also extremely verbose, in standard LLM slop style. Should have told Claude to "be brief" when telling it to write this post.

Re: I benchmarked Claude Code's caveman plugin against "be brief."

#15

Post by adamsmark »

lofaszvanitt wrote: post #3

Caveman is useless for me. We are in the year 2026, computers are here to serve me, and bring me comfort. Caveman is a caveman, speaks like an idiot. I don't want to interact with an idiot. It's irritating, and as the article states, an overhyped turd. It is the same idiocy that permeates EV cars. You buy an expensive car to go from A to B and at the same time offer you comfort. When I have to think about using the s…

But you can turn off brain. Try make self idiot. Save brain energy for important. Smarty speaks in idiot. When smarty speak like that is consistent. Idiot understand fast.

It would have been hilarious if the author spoke like a caveman in his video or had a section in that article where he explained his conclusions like a caveman.

Re: I benchmarked Claude Code's caveman plugin against "be brief."

#16

Post by max-t-dev »

ramesh31 wrote: post #13

Caveman sounds clever if you have no idea how LLM reasoning works. Talking through a problem out loud, in depth, is a critical part of how things like Claude Code even get to a result. Those aren't "wasted tokens", they're an integral part of how the LLM reaches a conclusion and completes its chain of reasoning.

Caveman doesn't compress the reasoning, only the output. The model still does its full reasoning before generating the response, caveman just affects how the final response is formatted.

Re: I benchmarked Claude Code's caveman plugin against "be brief."

#17

Post by kingstnap »

lofaszvanitt wrote: post #3

Caveman is useless for me. We are in the year 2026, computers are here to serve me, and bring me comfort. Caveman is a caveman, speaks like an idiot. I don't want to interact with an idiot. It's irritating, and as the article states, an overhyped turd. It is the same idiocy that permeates EV cars. You buy an expensive car to go from A to B and at the same time offer you comfort. When I have to think about using the s…

Of the things you could complain about in modern cars as being too complicated, you chose turning on seat heating???

Like you push the seat heating button if your seat feels cold. What is there to think about?

Re: I benchmarked Claude Code's caveman plugin against "be brief."

#18

Post by rideontime »

adamsmark wrote: post #15
lofaszvanitt wrote: post #3

Caveman is useless for me. We are in the year 2026, computers are here to serve me, and bring me comfort. Caveman is a caveman, speaks like an idiot. I don't want to interact with an idiot. It's irritating, and as the article states, an overhyped turd. It is the same idiocy that permeates EV cars. You buy an expensive car to go from A to B and at the same time offer you comfort. When I have to think about using the s…

But you can turn off brain. Try make self idiot. Save brain energy for important. Smarty speaks in idiot. When smarty speak like that is consistent. Idiot understand fast. It would have been hilarious if the author spoke like a caveman in his video or had a section in that article where he explained his conclusions like a caveman.

Was this actually easier to write than just writing what comes naturally?

Re: I benchmarked Claude Code's caveman plugin against "be brief."

#19

Post by adamsmark »

max-t-dev wrote: post #2

Author here. Caveman is a popular Claude Code plugin that compresses Claude's responses via a custom skill with intensity modes. I wanted to know whether it actually beats the simplest possible alternative, prepending "be brief." to prompts. 24 prompts, 5 arms, judged by a separate Claude against per-prompt rubrics covering required facts, required terms, and dangerous wrong claims to avoid. 120 scored responses, 100…

Write caveman summary too. Fast read.

Re: I benchmarked Claude Code's caveman plugin against "be brief."

#20

Post by adamsmark »

rideontime wrote: post #18
adamsmark wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can turn off brain. Try make self idiot. Save brain energy for important. Smarty speaks in idiot. When smarty speak like that is consistent. Idiot understand fast. It would have been hilarious if the author spoke like a caveman in his video or had a section in that article where he explained his conclusions like a caveman.

Was this actually easier to write than just writing what comes naturally?

Heck no. I had fun though.
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