cavecrew

cavecrew

Decision guide. When to delegate to caveman subagents instead of doing the work inline.

What it does

Tells the main thread when to spawn a caveman-style subagent versus the vanilla equivalent. The win: subagent tool-results inject back into main context verbatim, and caveman output is roughly 1/3 the size of vanilla prose. Across 20 delegations in one session, that is the difference between context exhaustion and finishing the task.

Three subagents:

Subagent	Job	Use when
cavecrew-investigator	Locate code (read-only)	"Where is X defined / what calls Y / list uses of Z"
cavecrew-builder	Surgical edit, 1-2 files	Scope is obvious, ≤2 files. Refuses 3+ file scope.
cavecrew-reviewer	Diff/file review	One-line findings with severity emoji

Use vanilla Explore or Code Reviewer when you want prose, architecture commentary, or rationale. Use main thread directly for one-line answers and 3+ file refactors.

This skill is a decision guide, not a slash command. It activates when the conversation mentions delegation.

How to invoke

Triggers on phrases like "delegate to subagent", "use cavecrew", "spawn investigator", "save context", "compressed agent output".

Example chaining

Locate → fix → verify (most common):

1. cavecrew-investigator returns site list (path:line — symbol — note)
2. Main thread picks 1-2 sites, hands paths to cavecrew-builder
3. cavecrew-reviewer audits the resulting diff

Parallel scout: spawn 2-3 cavecrew-investigator calls in one message with different angles (defs, callers, tests). Aggregate in main.

See also

• SKILL.md — full decision matrix and output contracts
• agents/cavecrew-investigator.md
• agents/cavecrew-builder.md
• agents/cavecrew-reviewer.md
• Caveman README — repo overview