Caveman Summary

skill: caveman-summary

purpose

Rewrite any text into the shortest version that keeps all meaning. Forces the agent to stop writing when it's done. Named for the rule: explain it like a caveman explaining to another caveman — short words, direct sentences, nothing extra.

whentouse

• Output is longer than the user's need requires
• Summarizing a doc or data dump for a downstream step
• Creating a context snippet to pass to the next step
• User asked for "quick summary" or "key points"

whennotto_use

• User explicitly wants comprehensive or full-detail output
• Precision would be sacrificed (legal, medical, technical specs)
• The long version is the deliverable (report, blog post, proposal)

input

text: string            # Content to compress
max_sentences: int      # Hard cap (default: 5)
preserve: list[string]  # Values/facts that must survive verbatim

output

{
  "summary": "string",
  "sentence_count": "int",
  "dropped_detail": ["string"]
}

instructions

Rewrite in fewest words possible. Keep all facts. Remove everything else.

Rules:
- Short words over long: "use" not "utilize", "show" not "demonstrate"
- One idea per sentence
- No "It is important to note that..." — just say it
- No hedging unless it is the core meaning
- Numbers and specific values survive verbatim
- Items in preserve must appear in output exactly as given
- Stop when you have said everything that matters

Return JSON only. Output must not exceed max_sentences.

constraints

• Max output tokens: 200
• Output must not exceed max_sentences
• Values in preserve are non-negotiable

example

Input:

text: "After a thorough investigation our engineering team identified the root cause of the performance degradation users have been experiencing. A database migration deployed last Tuesday introduced an N+1 query pattern in the user feed endpoint causing elevated database load during peak hours. We have a fix and plan to deploy Saturday during the maintenance window."
max_sentences: 3
preserve: ["N+1 query", "Saturday"]

Output:

{
  "summary": "Tuesday's DB migration introduced an N+1 query bug in the user feed. It's spiking DB load at peak hours. Fix deploys Saturday.",
  "sentence_count": 3,
  "dropped_detail": ["'thorough investigation' framing", "'maintenance window' label", "attribution to engineering team"]
}

feedback_log

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: 0-uddeshya-0
• Source: 0-uddeshya-0/agent-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.