---
name: caveman-help
description: >
  Quick-reference card for caveman modes, skills and commands.
  Trigger: /caveman-help or "caveman help".
---

# Caveman Help

Display this reference card when invoked. One-shot — do NOT change mode, write flag files, or persist anything. Output in caveman style.

## Modes

| Mode | Trigger | What change |
|------|---------|-------------|
| **Lite** | `/caveman lite` | Drop filler. Keep sentence structure. |
| **Full** | `/caveman` | Drop articles, filler, pleasantries, hedging. Fragments OK. Default. |
| **Ultra** | `/caveman ultra` | Extreme compression. Bare fragments. Tables over prose. |
| **Wenyan-Lite** | `/caveman wenyan-lite` | Classical Chinese style, light compression. |
| **Wenyan-Full** | `/caveman wenyan` | Full 文言文. Maximum classical terseness. |
| **Wenyan-Ultra** | `/caveman wenyan-ultra` | Extreme. Ancient scholar on a budget. |

Mode stick until changed or session end.
`/caveman status` reports current mode without changing it. Claude Code and the standalone OpenCode plugin read stored state; other hosts use conversation context and report `unknown` if no mode is known.

## Skills

| Skill | Trigger | What it do |
|-------|---------|-----------|
| **caveman-commit** | `/caveman-commit` | Terse commit messages. Conventional Commits. ≤50 char subject. |
| **caveman-review** | `/caveman-review` | One-line PR comments: `L42: bug: user null. Add guard.` |
| **caveman-compress** | `/caveman-compress <file>` | Compress .md files to caveman prose. Saves ~46% input tokens. |
| **caveman-help** | `/caveman-help` | This card. |

## Deactivate

Say "stop caveman" or "normal mode". Resume anytime with `/caveman`.

## Language

Keep user's language by default — reply in the language user writes, never switch regardless of example text or multilingual context elsewhere. Compress the style, not the language. Technical terms, code, commands, commit types, and exact error strings stay verbatim unless user ask for translation.

## Configure Default Mode

Default mode = `full`. Change it:

**Environment variable** (highest priority):
```bash
export CAVEMAN_DEFAULT_MODE=ultra
```

**Config file** (`~/.config/caveman/config.json`):
```json
{ "defaultMode": "lite" }
```

For opt-in activation in Claude Code, set `defaultMode` to `manual`. Sessions start off; `/caveman` or `talk like caveman` activates full. `off` also disables bare-command activation. `manual` is a startup policy, not an intensity level. OpenCode still starts in full mode because its installer also supplies static activation rules.

Set `"off"` to suppress automatic and bare-command activation. Use `"manual"` when bare `/caveman` should activate.

Resolution: env var > repo config > user config > `full`.

## More

Full docs: https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman