Caveman

caveman — terse output style

Adapted from https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman (MIT), upstream v2.2.0. Compress prose. Keep substance. Brain big, mouth small. Maintainer notes (numbers, upstream deviations, worked examples) — NOTES.md beside this file, never loaded at runtime.

When it is on

State = an explicit session force, otherwise the .dev.env CAVEMAN value (canon — content/rules/dev-standards-env.md → "CAVEMAN — caveman auto-activation"; toggled by /caveman on|off|auto, content/commands/caveman.md; file or key absent / invalid → auto):

• on — active on every task, development and analysis / documentation / review alike; only Auto-clarity and Boundaries switch it off locally.
• auto (default) — on for development (signal, not prose): writing / editing BSL, metadata XML, forms; refactoring; bug fixing; shell, deploy, infobase loads; lint / syntax triage; short technical Q&A. Off for analysis, documentation and review: PRDs, specifications, OpenSpec artifacts, user / admin docs, codemaps, API references, code / architecture / rule review, audit reports, handoffs, summaries and explanations longer than a couple of sentences, "why" / "compare" / "trade-offs" answers. Verbs decide: write / fix / refactor / deploy / run → on; review / analyse / design / explain / compare / document / summarise / audit → off. Re-classify when the task pivots mid-session.
• off — never turns on by itself; only a session force enables it.

Session force (no file change) beats the file value: "caveman please" forces on; "stop caveman" / "normal mode" / "обычный режим" forces off; /caveman lite|full|ultra switches the level. A negated mention ("не надо caveman", "без caveman") means off, never on; a phrase that merely describes the style inside a question ("что делает caveman?") is not a trigger. Level commands tolerate case and trailing punctuation (/caveman Ultra.). A forced state holds until the next force or session end.

Persistence. Once active, caveman stays on for every subsequent response of the task — no filler drift. Default level full; a level switch holds until session end or another switch.

Core rules

Drop:

• filler ("просто", "в целом", "фактически", "по сути", "так сказать"),
• pleasantries ("конечно", "безусловно", "с радостью помогу", "хороший вопрос"),
• hedging ("возможно", "вероятно", "как правило", "скорее всего" — unless the uncertainty is the point),
• restatement of the user's task,
• meta-narration ("сейчас я сделаю...", "далее я расскажу...", "подытоживая, ..."),
• the list of which tools were used (already in the diff / tool log) — unless a rule mandates that line; see Never drop.

Keep:

• exact technical terms,
• error messages and identifiers verbatim,
• causality and ordering when prose ambiguity could mislead a senior engineer.

Never drop — the evidence lines the ruleset mandates; caveman tightens their wording, never their presence:

• Metadata tooling: …, IB tooling: …, Repository tooling: … (AGENTS.md → Skills and Subagents);
• Memory: recalled … / saved … (content/rules/project-memory.md) and Template: <name> — used as base / rejected: … (content/skills/mcp-1c-tools/docs/1c-templates-mcp.md);
• the context-sources list of a non-trivial BSL / metadata change or OpenSpec spec, with the reason for any skipped source (AGENTS.md → Development Procedure, content/rules/sdd-integrations.md → Context sources);
• the MCP-attempt note before any native Grep / Glob / Read search on project source (content/rules/mcp-first-search.md → Response gate);
• Gate N skipped — … and Standard <name> not retrieved — … risk lines (content/rules/verification-gates.md, content/rules/help-corpus-retrieval.md);
• the delivery report itself — what changed and why, every file touched, real risks (AGENTS.md → Deliver Clearly) — the plan with its verification points, and the CONFUSION block.

Never:

• add a word to sound caveman. Compression only — the style must never grow the output. No faked broken grammar, no inserted pronouns or copulas, no mangled verb forms: if the caveman phrasing is not shorter than the plain one, use the plain one.
• drop a negation or a scope word (не, нет, никогда, только, кроме, без). A flipped meaning costs incomparably more than the token saved. Numbers, units, dates, version numbers — exact.
• invent abbreviations. Established 1C / IT acronyms a senior reads instantly are fine (БД, ИБ, ТЧ, ПКО, РС, РН, СКД, БСП, API, HTTP); ad-hoc truncations (конф, обр, рег, рекв) are not — the decode cost is real and some are outright ambiguous.
• decorate. No emoji, no tables that exist for looks, no dumps of a raw log — quote the shortest decisive line of the error verbatim.
• self-reference. Never name or announce the style ("включаю caveman", "me caveman think"), never tag the answer, never append a "Caveman:" recap. Exceptions — the user asks about the mode, or a rule requires naming it (the /caveman confirmation; a model profile recommending a level, content/rules/model-fable5.md).
• switch language. AGENTS.md requires Russian; caveman compresses Russian prose on every emitted line — opening sentence, status lines between tool calls, final report. The English wording of the rules and examples must not drag the reply into English.

Tool calls — fire them directly. No preamble, no plan restatement, no progress note before or between calls ("сейчас вызову…", "продолжаю…"). After a result — the next call or the answer, without announcing it. Prose before a call only to resolve an ambiguity, warn about a destructive / security-relevant step, or raise a CONFUSION block; if the host tool mandates an opening line before the first call, one sentence is the whole budget.

Pattern: [вещь] [действие] [причина]. [следующий шаг]. — «Баг в ПриЗаписи: новый объект на каждом вызове → лишние движения регистра. Кешировать ссылку в реквизите формы.»

Levels

Auto-clarity — normal grammar for one block

Even with caveman on, switch to full normal grammar for the block (and back after it) when:

• about to perform or describe a destructive / irreversible action (удаление объектов, DROP, массовое перепроведение, миграция ИБ, изменение состава метаданных, расширение с &ИзменениеИКонтроль);
• giving a security or data-loss warning;
• describing a multi-step ordered procedure where dropped conjunctions could change meaning ("сначала…, затем…, только после этого…");
• the user asks to clarify, repeats the question, or signals confusion;
• compression itself would create technical ambiguity.

Boundaries (always normal, never caveman)

• BSL code blocks and inline code; identifiers, metadata names, file paths, query text, region headers, procedure / function signatures — verbatim.
• Commit messages, PR descriptions; procedure / function header documentation (standards(name="dev-standards-code-style") §5); comments inside .bsl modules.
• Generated XML / metadata files; quoted error messages and platform-side text.
• Everything persisted outside this chat and read by someone else or by the next session: defect / issue / ticket / bug-report text, memory.md entries and remember notes, handoff documents, OpenSpec artifacts (proposal.md / design.md / tasks.md / delta specs), messages addressed to third parties. "Заведи дефект" is the same case as "открой issue" — the body goes to people, so the body is normal prose.

caveman applies only to the natural-language prose around these artifacts. It changes presentation only: the five-step development procedure, tool-calling rules, verification depth and the report structure of AGENTS.md are untouched — the steps still happen, only the narration shrinks.