Julius Brussee

Run a spec-driven agent loop where coding tasks live as markdown specs that move through inbox → active → archive, get implemented by Claude Code or Codex, and pass a review gate before they count as done. Use when the user mentions "loop factory", a "spec-driven loop", an "agent factory", wants repeatable/reviewable agent work, or when a repo has a factory/specs/inbox or factory/specs/active directory. Also covers installing and scaffolding the loop-factory CLI into a project.

Finds and finishes the last 20% of a built solution — the experiential layer agents skip: what the output actually reads like, which pages or screens should exist, first-run and empty states, opinionated defaults, the golden path. Use when planning any build so the magic gets specced as concretely as the plumbing, before calling any build "done", when a solution works but feels like a demo, or when the user says "last 20%", "finish this", "make it actually good", "is this actually done", or "why does this feel flat".

Adversarial senior-engineer review for agent-generated plans, designs, and architectures. Treats the current output as junior work, constructs a senior reviewer whose domain expertise comes from live codebase research plus web research of current best practices, diagnoses altitude failures (too vague or too granular), then rewrites the plan into a scoped, state-of-the-art version. Use when the user says "junior to senior", "senior review", "review this like a staff engineer", when a plan feels hand-wavy or lost in details, or before committing to any agent-written plan.

Authoritative guide for implementing stunning, accessible, performant UI. Synthesizes design engineering philosophy, accessibility standards, animation principles, spatial design, typography, color systems, and component craft into a single actionable reference. Complements the design-system skill (which covers DESIGN.md spec writing) by covering the HOW of implementation. Trigger phrases: "build UI", "create component", "landing page", "make it look good", "frontend", "design", "polish UI", "implement design", "make it beautiful", "UI implementation", "component styling", "animation", "accessibility"

Calibrated grilling session for stress-testing a plan, design, idea, or decision. First assesses the user's topic knowledge, confidence, and desired pressure level, then asks one question at a time with recommended answers. Use when user says "grill me", "stress-test this", "challenge my plan", "interview me", or wants a plan probed without being overwhelmed.

De-slop pass for any text. Scans for the statistical fingerprints of AI writing (negative parallelism / "not X but Y", em-dash density, rule-of-three, false ranges, puffery vocabulary, uniform cadence, hedged both-sidesing), rewrites by meaning, then re-scans until the text is clean and sits in the right register for its genre: academic article, tweet, reddit post, email, blog, docs, marketing. Use when the user says "deslopify", "deslop", "de-slop this", "remove the AI tells", "humanize this", "make this not sound like AI", or invokes /deslopify. Also use before publishing any agent-drafted prose.

Install a per-turn canary signal (e.g. starting every reply with the user's name and a turn counter) so silent context degradation becomes visible the moment it happens, and run a recovery protocol when the canary trips. Use when the user mentions a "canary", "context canary", or "canary check", asks to detect context rot / compaction / drift, says "you stopped using my name" or "did you lose context", asks "how degraded is your context", or wants an early-warning system for long agent sessions.

Ultra-compressed communication mode. Cuts token usage ~75% by speaking like caveman while keeping full technical accuracy. Supports intensity levels: lite, full (default), ultra, wenyan-lite, wenyan-full, wenyan-ultra. Use when user says "caveman mode", "talk like caveman", "use caveman", "less tokens", "be brief", or invokes /caveman. Also auto-triggers when token efficiency is requested.

Create, amend, or backprop bugs into SPEC.md at repo root. Sole mutator of the project spec. Triggers when the user asks to write a spec, start a new spec, distill a spec from existing code, add invariants, amend sections (§G, §C, §I, §V, §T, §B), or record a bug via backprop. Common phrasings: "write the spec for...", "new spec", "bug: ...", "amend §V.3", "distill spec from code", "spec this idea". Reads and follows FORMAT.md for the caveman encoding rules and pipe-table shape of §T and §B.

Adversarial senior review of the spec before any code is written. Constructs a skeptical reviewer whose authority comes from the codebase, §R research, and live best-practice — then tries to REFUTE the spec, not rubber-stamp it. Every finding cites evidence (file:line or source); unverifiable ones are flagged. Survivors harden §V; the run ends in an explicit go / no-go gate. Triggers before building anything high-blast-radius, when the user says "review the spec", "red-team this", "is this plan sound", "senior review", or invokes /ck:review.

Gather external knowledge the spec needs and distill it into §R — the durable research log — so build grounds in facts instead of hallucinating library behavior. Each finding cites a source; unsourced claims are flagged, never written as fact. Triggers when a spec decision hinges on a library/API/best practice the agent is unsure of, when the user says "research this", "what's the best lib for…", "check current best practice", or invokes /ck:research. Defers the §R write to the spec skill.

Calibrated interrogation of a fuzzy idea before it becomes a spec. Asks one question at a time, recommends an answer, and lands each answer in §G (goal) or §C (constraints) — unknowns parked as `?` items, never guessed. The cheapest place to kill a bad idea is before §T exists. Triggers when the user has a vague idea, says "grill me", "stress-test this", "challenge my plan", "interview me before I spec", or invokes /ck:grill. Defers the actual write to the spec skill.

Optional design-improvement pass for when you have spare usage to drain. Finds the shallowest modules in the code the spec touches, researches a deeper design, and proposes refactors that shrink interfaces and hide decisions — behavior held constant, tests green before and after. Proposes §I/§V/§T edits, never silent rewrites. Triggers when the user says "deepen this", "improve the design", "this module feels shallow", "pull complexity down", "use spare budget on the codebase", or invokes /ck:deepen. Leans on the codebase-design skill's deep-module vocabulary when present.

Read-only drift detector. Diffs SPEC.md against current code and reports violations grouped by severity. Writes nothing — suggests remedies via the spec or build skills but never invokes them. Triggers when the user asks to check drift, audit the spec, verify invariants, or ask whether code still matches the spec. Phrasings: "check drift", "audit the spec", "does the code still match §V", "check invariants", "spec vs code".

Caveman encoding for SPEC.md and spec-adjacent writes. Loaded by /spec, /build, /check. Cuts tokens ~75% vs prose while staying precise. Triggers on any write to SPEC.md or when user says "caveman", "compress this", "be brief".

Plan-then-execute implementation against SPEC.md. Native single-thread loop, no sub-agents. On test or build failure, auto-invokes the backprop skill before retrying — a failed verification always considers whether a new §V invariant would prevent recurrence. Triggers when the user asks to build, implement, execute the spec, or tackle a specific §T task (`build §T.3`, `build --next`, `implement next task`, `run the build`). Expects SPEC.md to exist; if not, defers to the spec skill.

Bug → spec protocol. When a bug is found or a test fails, trace the cause, decide whether a new §V invariant would catch recurrence, append to §B. This is the one non-obvious thing SDD does that plan-then-execute doesn't. Triggers on test failure, bug report, post-mortem, or explicit user ask.

Prove existing work meets acceptance conditions without expanding scope. Use for validation-only tasks, completion checks, focused gate runs, and last-mile proof.

Fix bugs and small behavior changes at the narrowest responsible layer. Use when regression proof, preserved surrounding behavior, and task-relevant tests matter.

Restructure code while preserving behavior. Use for extraction, consolidation, ownership moves, or cleanup where verification must bracket structural edits.

Implement reversible compatibility-safe transitions. Use for schema, data, API, protocol, configuration, or dependency migrations requiring rollback and preservation proof.

Build feature work with high overbuilding risk. Use for new behavior, product slices, or integrations where repository reuse, strict scope, and an explicit stop condition matter.

Diagnose ambiguous failures before editing. Use for unknown causes, intermittent behavior, performance regressions, or investigations needing evidence-ranked hypotheses.

Show recorded output and cache-read token usage and mode attribution for the current Claude Code session, or locate the host's native usage report. Trigger: /caveman-stats.

Wire a repository through the Caveman Cloud gateway so every LLM request is measured, with no behavior change. Use for "set up caveman" or adding LLM spend observability.

Compressed code review - one line per finding with location, problem and fix. Use for /caveman-review, "review this PR", or "review the diff".

Turn a Caveman optimization observation into an operator-chosen candidate with a paired baseline evaluation. Use when asked to inspect or evaluate a Caveman optimization report. Needs explicit approval.

Inspect Caveman Cloud's experiment lifecycle and block unsafe execution. Use when asked to start, approve, cancel, promote or roll back a Caveman experiment.

Act on a Caveman learn report - review the ranked token sinks, apply cost-lowering fixes with per-edit consent, and report what those fixes returned. Use when asked to lower an agent's token cost, what caveman has saved, to trim a heavy CLAUDE.md, or to offload re-pasted context into cavemem.

Quick-reference card for caveman modes, skills and commands. Trigger: /caveman-help or "caveman help".

Read-only repository explorer for cold-start orientation, broad cross-file localization, or when a direct search failed. Skip it when the exact file or symbol is already named. Returns path:line citations only; its reads stay out of main context.

Read-only review of Caveman Cloud evidence: cost, Cave Score, workflows, traces, latency, errors, routing, savings. Use when asked what Caveman found or where LLM spend goes.

Find and label every LLM workflow in the repository so Caveman Cloud groups spend by workflow instead of one bucket. Use for "discover workflows" or breaking LLM spend down by workflow.

Compress a memory file such as CLAUDE.md or a todo list into caveman format to save input tokens, keeping a readable backup. Trigger: /caveman-compress.

Write a Conventional Commits message compressed to intent only. Use for "write a commit", "commit message", /commit or /caveman-commit.

Ultra-compressed communication mode that cuts output tokens while keeping technical accuracy. Levels: lite, full, ultra and the wenyan variants. Use for /caveman, "caveman mode", "talk like caveman", "be brief" or "less tokens".

When to delegate to `cavecrew-investigator` (locate code), `cavecrew-builder` (1-2 file edit) or `cavecrew-reviewer` (diff review) instead of working inline or using `Explore`. Their output is compressed, so main context lasts longer.