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caveman-savings, in plain language

What problem does this solve?

Claude Code (the AI coding assistant) burns through its conversation "budget" (tokens) faster than it needs to on a few predictable things: long memory files it re-reads every session, verbose tool output from add-on servers, and a main assistant doing small chores itself instead of delegating them to cheaper helper assistants. "Caveman" is a set of settings and habits that cut that waste without losing any capability - it just means "say the same thing in fewer words."

What do these two scripts actually do?

Apply-CavemanSavings.ps1 turns the caveman settings on for one computer, in three steps:

  1. Shrinks (compresses) the memory notes Claude Code re-reads at the start of every conversation, keeping a backup of the original in case anything needs to be restored.
  2. Adds a short instruction to Claude's global notes file telling it to hand off small, repetitive jobs (finding code, one-line fixes, reviewing a diff) to lightweight helper assistants instead of doing everything itself.
  3. Puts a ceiling on how much text add-on tools are allowed to dump back into the conversation at once.

You can run it again any time - it never does the same work twice, and it never breaks something that's already set up correctly.

Migrate-CavemanBackups.ps1 is a one-time cleanup for computers that ran an old version of the apply script. That old version sometimes saved backups from two different projects to the same filename, which could quietly overwrite one project's backup with another's. This script sorts out which backup belongs to which project and moves each one to its own safe spot. If a computer never ran the old version, this script has nothing to do and just says so.

Do I need to do anything with this?

If you're setting up caveman savings on a new house computer: run Migrate-CavemanBackups.ps1 first (just in case), then Apply-CavemanSavings.ps1. Both are safe to run more than once.

Is anything sensitive in here?

No. Nothing in this repository is a password, API key, or login token. The scripts only read and write ordinary configuration files that already live on your own computer.