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Does Speaking to Agents Like Cavemen Save 65% of Tokens? We Test

https://blog.jetbrains.com/ai/2026/07/speak-to-ai-agents-like-cavemen-tosave-tokens/
25•Sandman•2d ago

Comments

igor_nast•2d ago
As the test shows the real gain is somewhat marginal to most people, but still some ppl claim a wide skills portfolio is required to move faster or save tokens. Mixed feelings, I personally use superpowers as my basic setup - and only them.

What are your thoughts on it?

glitchc•45m ago
I use my local GPU. Yes, I realize it's not exactly a superpower, but it's technology that's pretty darn close to one.
pineappletooth_•1h ago
Well 8%-10% saving without measured quality degradation is not nothing, specially now that newer models seem to use more tokens than previous ones.

Also it was tested on reasoning low, i'd have liked to have them tested on higher reasoning levels.

mjevans•44m ago
Ask, what is the function of grammar in language? I would argue two major functions. Forcing an encoder to marshal ideas into a coherent structure. Preserving the integrity of that structure when communicated and decoded.

Grammar sounds off? Was the message correctly understood; is there enough left to apply error correction and regenerate the intended message?

altmanaltman•52m ago
Yes all the caveman spoke English like its freaking Flinstone. Like wtf is the caveman dilect, just english words with some randomly skipped? Why not try with actual other human languages and see if there is a token benefit in savings
strictnein•41m ago
Sounds like some good research. You should pursue it.
inasense•33m ago
lol - so easy a caveman can do it.
altmanaltman•7m ago
Someone definitely should
gruntled-worker•13m ago
Me mechanic not speak English. But he know what me mean when me say "car no go", and we best friends. So me think: why waste time, say lot word when few word do trick?
altmanaltman•8m ago
To see world
abofh•46m ago
If you just want a smaller vocabulary, use French? If your goal is to communicate to an LLM, maybe saving tokens isn't the all in win, unless you like reading assert gronkHitThing(true)
kardos•32m ago
French text is somewhere around 10-30% longer than the corresponding English text. I would guess much of what you save on smaller vocabulary is lost on the lengthened text.
ViscountPenguin•30m ago
What would matter more is the token length, depends how well your tokenizer was trained on french I guess.
mmastrac•43m ago
I suspect this means that there's just a ~10% inefficiency in token to information mapping.
sh34r•36m ago
gpt 4 moto razr wen?
DougN7•34m ago
I don’t know about the rest of you, but the bulk of my token usage is not what I type in - it’s that data the AI is processing for me. I’m shocked they even got an 8% reduction.
ButlerianJihad•23m ago
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.nerd.obsessive/c/EGuKIN_4dME...

  alt.nerd.obsessive FAQ v1.4

  In the episode where they were filming the Radioactive Man movie [1995], the comic book store guy tells Bart that he can find out the star of the RM movie. He promptly posts a message to alt.nerd.obsessive which states "Need know star RM pic". This information is relayed through the nerd world until it reaches a nerd hiding under the table at a meeting of movie moguls casting the film. He relays back the answer immediately (Rainier Wolfcastle).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_Man_(The_Simpsons_...
jpease•8m ago
Why not Mandarin Chinese? Logographic is pretty compact.

Also, this really should be more precise that it’s talking about neo-caveman. Legit caveman no speak English.

NitpickLawyer•5m ago
I think it's funny this works somewhat, but that's not what the goal is, IMO. The goal is to have the model do this internally in its "thinking" stage. On the very rare occasions in the past where gpt5 leaked its true internal thinking, the "CoT" was itself kinda similar. Instead of the open source "so the user wants me to... but wait... maybe I should... blahblah...", GPT5 was using internal traces like "try x.. no.. try y... no.. from x yes then z yes...". That's probably more token saving, or faster responses, if you can get the model to remain accurate.

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Does Speaking to Agents Like Cavemen Save 65% of Tokens? We Test

https://blog.jetbrains.com/ai/2026/07/speak-to-ai-agents-like-cavemen-tosave-tokens/
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