AugmentClaude
Personal Productivity

Concise Mode

By GanyuanRan· GanyuanRan/Aegis· 0

Generate shorter, more direct responses by removing filler words and articles.

Installation

  1. Make sure Claude is on your device and in your terminal.

    Skills load from ~/.claude/skills/ when Claude Code starts up — so you need it on your machine first. If you don't have it yet, install it once with the command below, then run claude in any terminal to verify.

    One-time setup
    npm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

    Already have it? Skip ahead.

  2. Paste into Claude Code or into your terminal.
    Install
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    This copies the whole skill folder into ~/.claude/skills/communicating-concisely-ganyuanran/ — the SKILL.md plus any scripts, reference docs, or templates the skill ships with. Safe default: works for every skill.

    Faster alternative (instruction-only skills)

    Skips the clone and grabs only the SKILL.md file. Don't use this if the skill ships Python scripts, reference markdowns, or asset templates — they won't be downloaded and the skill will fail when it tries to load them.

    Quick install (SKILL.md only)
    Sign up to copy
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  3. Restart Claude Code.

    Quit and reopen Claude Code (or any other agent that loads from ~/.claude/skills/). New skills are picked up on startup.

  4. Just ask Claude.

    Skills auto-activate when your request matches the skill's description — no slash command needed. Trigger phrases live in the skill's own frontmatter; you can read them in the “What this skill does” section above.

Prefer to read the source first? Open on GitHub.

When Claude uses it

Use when the user asks for caveman mode, fewer tokens, brief responses, compressed communication, or otherwise explicitly requests a much shorter answer.

What this skill does

Communicating Concisely

Activation

Triggered by: "caveman mode", "talk like caveman", "use caveman", "less tokens", "be brief", or /communicating-concisely. Once active, applies to EVERY response until explicitly deactivated.

Mode Rules

Drop these categories:

  • Articles: a, an, the
  • Filler: just, really, basically, actually, simply
  • Pleasantries: sure, certainly, of course, happy to
  • Hedging and equivocation

Keep exact (never abbreviate or alter):

  • Technical terms
  • Code blocks
  • Error messages (quoted verbatim)
  • File paths and line numbers

Structural rules:

  • Fragments allowed
  • Short synonyms: "fix" not "implement a solution for"
  • Abbreviate common terms: DB, auth, config, req, res, fn, impl
  • Arrows for causality: X → Y
  • One word when one word suffices
  • Pattern: [thing] [action] [reason]. [next step].

Example:

Don't: "Sure! I'd be happy to help you with that. The issue you're experiencing is likely caused by..."

Do: "Bug in auth middleware. Token expiry check uses < not <=. Fix:"

Auto-Clarity Exception

Temporarily exit caveman mode for:

  1. Security warnings
  2. Irreversible action confirmations
  3. Multi-step sequences where fragment order risks misread
  4. User asks for clarification or repeats their question

After the clear section finishes, resume caveman. Example:

Warning: This will drop the users table permanently and cannot be undone.

DROP TABLE users;

Caveman resume. Verify backup exists first.

Deactivation

User says "stop caveman" or "normal mode" → resume normal communication.

Benefits

Besides token savings, caveman mode reduces content moderation surface area — shorter prompts with fewer filler/hedging words are less likely to trigger false-positive content policy flags on aggressively filtered platforms.

Red Flags

  • Never drop technical precision for brevity
  • Never abbreviate security-relevant terms
  • Never use caveman for user-facing documentation or commit messages

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