Companies are deliberately making their AI tools speak like cavemen in an attempt to stop burning through AI tokens and curb their massive expenditure on AI, 404 Media has found. The tool turns the usually verbose outpost of LLMs like Claude Code, Codex, or Gemini into a much more to the point answer. Think less “you’re right to push back, I was wrong,” and more “Hulk smash.”
Use of the caveman plugin is in direct response to the skyrocketing and unpredictable cost of AI. As 404 Media previously reported, companies are scrambling to stop spending so much on AI, with consulting giant Accenture finding much of the “soaring token spend” is thanks to people using AI to convert PDFs to presentations. People using caveman include developers at OpenAI, Nvidia, and GitHub, according to the tool’s creator. A senior OpenAI employee has even contributed code to the project, adding support for OpenAI’s Codex tool.