AI · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Caveman
why use many token when few do trick
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier.
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Context Gateway▲220We built an open-source proxy that sits between coding agents (Claude Code, OpenClaw, etc.) and the LLM, compressing tool outputs before they enter the context window. Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vFZ6MPrwjw#t=9s. Motivation: Agents are terrible at managing context. A single file read or grep can dump thousands of tokens into the window, most of it noise. This isn't just expensive — it actively degrades quality. Long-context benchmarks consistently show steep accuracy drops as context grows (OpenAI's GPT-5.4 eval goes from 97.2% at 32k to 36.6% at 1M…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Harness by Autonomousfree tier, from $149/mo▲288Every coding agent, every machine, one command center.
6d ago · autonomous.ai · its alternatives →
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Agentmemory▲310Persistent memory for Claude Code, Codex & coding agents
May 2026 · agent-memory.dev · its alternatives →
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I got tired of playwright-mcp eating through Claude's 200K token limit, so I built this using the new Claude Skills system. Built it with Claude Code itself. Instead of sending accessibility tree snapshots on every action, Claude just writes Playwright code and runs it. You get back screenshots and console output. That's it. 314 lines of instructions vs a persistent MCP server. Full API docs only load if Claude needs them. Same browser automation, way less overhead. Works as a Claude Code plugin or manual install. Token limit issue:…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Agent Skills▲190Curated agent-skills: 1,000+ practical skills selected from 63,000+ GitHub skills. Filter by newest/hot/installs. Works with Claude Code, Codex, ChatGPT, and Cursor.
Mar 2026 · agentskill.sh · its alternatives →
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Prompt injection and token savings - #1 in benchmarks
Jul 2026 · constellationgate.ai · its alternatives →
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Save 89% of wasted tokens on your AI coding agent
Mar 2026 · rtk-ai.app · its alternatives →
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Your AI agent is burning 6x more tokens than it needs to just to browse the web. We built OpenBrowser MCP to fix that. Most browser MCPs give the LLM dozens of tools: click, scroll, type, extract, navigate. Each call dumps the entire page accessibility tree into the context window. One Wikipedia page? 124K+ tokens. Every. Single. Call. OpenBrowser works differently. It exposes one tool. Your agent writes Python code, and OpenBrowser executes it in a persistent runtime with full browser access. The agent controls what comes back. No bloated page dumps. No wasted tokens. Just the data your…
Apr 2026 · openbrowser.me · its alternatives →
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Vexilo▲86Claude Code planner w/ 31 agents, 92 commands, + 121 skills
May 2026 · vexilo.app · its alternatives →
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A pre-execution guard for AI coding agents. It blocks destructive Git and file system commands, plus common attempts to access sensitive files, before a tool call runs. Supports Amp Code, Antigravity CLI, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, Grok Build, Hermes Agent, Kimi Code
Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12IN
Tl;dr: I trained a classifier to route to the least expensive model and reasoning depth to complete the request. Coupling that with additional automated token efficiency techniques has yielded 3x usage for the same spend. For anyone interested in trying it themselves: https://nerfguard.com Various teammates and I switched over to Codex from Claude Code recently. We still bounce between the tools, but Codex’s speed and steerability coupled with performance gains were hard to ignore. One of the downsides was that the per token pricing kicked in way sooner. This is happening across…
Jun 2026 · its alternatives →
- 13HW
A bunch of companies that I spoke to had their own claude & codex OTel dashboards that showed spend + seats per month. However, none of the dashboards actually analyzed how the engineers worked with the tools and if there were any areas for improvement! That's why I created https://www.promptster.ai. Managers get aggregate level view of code quality and how that ties with team workflows (nothing on a per-engineer level). While engineers get personalized coaching on how they can save tokens while keeping output high. We also have a tool built for individuals to test their local…
Jul 2026 · its alternatives →
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Aether▲26Since coding agents like Claude Code and Codex came out, I've been pretty obsessed with them. It's hard not to when you're getting a 20x discount on inference. I've also been frustrated by them a lot. I hated walking around with my laptop lid open while connected to a hotspot on my phone, having to tediously accept commands so I don't lose my root directory, and running out of RAM when running multiple agents that were spinning up dev servers in different worktrees at once. A lot of people would say existing cloud agents are the solution to this, as none of the above problems apply to any…
Jul 2026 · runaether.dev · its alternatives →
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Layman▲10Caveman fork - but much cooler, Now anyone.. ANYONE can code
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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See what your AI coding agents think, cost and do
Jul 2026 · tokentelemetry.com · its alternatives →
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Hey HN! I've been building Claurst - a clean-room implementation of Claude Code in Rust, with extra features to make my ideal agentic Open-Source AI CLI. It's WIP and rough, but I'm shipping a lot to make it amaze amaze amaze. Inspired by this HN post [1] I saw a few hours ago about caveman speak for token-efficient output, I added /Caveman and /Rocky (from project Hail Mary) to Claurst. Caveman grammar drops ~70% of output tokens keeping technical substance and Rocky brings a close compression with more personality. Both are first-class slash commands with three levels: lite,…
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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I built Hydra because I kept losing my flow when Claude Code hit usage limits mid-task. I would copy context, open another tool, and then re-explain everything. This would be super annoying for me. Hydra wraps your AI coding CLIs (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Pi, or any terminal-based tool) in a single command. It monitors terminal output for rate limit patterns, and when one provider runs out, you switch to another with one keypress. Your conversation history, git diff, and recent commits are automatically copied to your clipboard so you can paste and keep going. The fallback chain is…
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Your customized plugin to cut token waste, up to 50% savings
May 2026 · analyzer.spec-kitty.ai · its alternatives →
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I use Claude Code, Codex and Cursor (and sometimes Antigravity) basically every day, and could never tell how much I was actually consuming across all of them. So I built TokenMaxxer. A small CLI reads the files these tools already write locally and puts it all in one dashboard, broken out by tool, model, provider and day. It covers 18 tools now, and you get a profile page with your daily activity, cost estimates, and your top models and tools. There's also a global leaderboard if you want to compete against other TokenMaxxers! I'd love to see if anyone can beat the first place (currently…
Aug 2026 · tokenmaxxer.xyz · its alternatives →
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Aneirin▲5Cut your Claude Code & Copilot token bill, losslessly
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Save tokens on every AI prompt. Press hotkey to trigger.
Jun 2026 · chromewebstore.google.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →