Cavekit

Status: frozen (August 2026). cavekit is no longer in active development.
Everything below still installs and works, but expect no new features or
fixes. Active development of the family lives in
caveman and
caveman-browse.

cavekit

  compressed spec-driven development for claude code
  one file · one loop · zero sub-agents

what this is

Plan-then-execute forgets. SDD remembers — but most SDD frameworks bury
that value under agent swarms, dashboards, and ceremony that costs more
tokens than it saves.

Cavekit is the simplest full loop: grill → spec → research → review →
build, over one SPEC.md file, no sub-agents. Three commands you run
every time; four more you reach for only when the change earns it.

The spine is three properties that earn their tokens:

- durable spec — SPEC.md at repo root survives context resets. It is
  the agent's long-term memory: lose the window, reload the spec, keep going.
- caveman encoding — ~75% fewer tokens than prose. Symbols, fragments,
  pipe tables. All nine skill descriptions cost ~1.1k context — 16× lighter
  than spec-kit's 18.6k. That is the whole point.
- backprop reflex — every test failure becomes a §B entry; classes
  of bug become §V invariants the spec never forgets.

And one rule that keeps it from bloating into the frameworks it replaces:
right-size. A one-line fix is just /build. The full chain is for
genuinely uncertain or high-blast-radius work — never for a typo.

commands

the loop — run these every time:

reach for these — only when the change earns the ceremony:

install

One line, via the skills CLI:

Installs nine skills into ~/.claude/skills/: spec, build, check
(the loop), grill, research, review, deepen (reach-for), plus
caveman and backprop (the utilities). Claude activates each when its
trigger context…