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):

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

Model overrides

By default, cavecrew-reviewer and cavecrew-investigator pin model: haiku in their frontmatter; cavecrew-builder has no model: line (uses the API session default). Set env vars in your shell before launching Claude Code to override per-agent:

Env var	Agent
`CAVECREW_REVIEWER_MODEL`	`cavecrew-reviewer`
`CAVECREW_BUILDER_MODEL`	`cavecrew-builder`
`CAVECREW_INVESTIGATOR_MODEL`	`cavecrew-investigator`

Example — run reviewer on sonnet, keep others on default:

export CAVECREW_REVIEWER_MODEL=sonnet

Use the same model name strings you'd use in any Claude Code agent frontmatter (e.g. haiku, sonnet, opus).

Overrides patch only the model: line in the installed agent's frontmatter; the prompt body is untouched and keeps receiving upstream updates. Plugin installs only — standalone hook installs have no local agent files to patch. Unset or blank = no change. The patch persists in the installed file until the plugin is updated or reinstalled.

README.md

cavecrew

What it does

How to invoke

Example chaining

Model overrides

See also