#40 What about token optimizers?

I was looking into token optimizers for OpenCode and found benchmarks of popular tools: Caveman, Rust Token Killer and Ponytail.

Speaking to AI Agents like Cavemen Saves 65% of Tokens. We Test. A paired A/B benchmark of the token-compression skill Caveman on Claude Code, run on SkillsBench: does it actually save tokens, and does it degrade AI agent output quality? Advertised saving: 65%. blog.jetbrains.com

rtk Claude Code Token Savings: A Skill Trial Benchmark Does "rtk" reduce Claude Code token usage? Part 2 of a series where we take public “token saving” add-ons for coding agents and run the same paired A/B benchmark against each of them. Part 1 was th blog.jetbrains.com

Ponytail Skill for Claude Code: Does It Really Cut Tokens Part 3 of a series where we take public "token saver" add-ons for coding agents and run the same paired A/B benchmark against each of them. Part 1 was the caveman skill (advertised −65%, measured −8.5 blog.jetbrains.com

To me the conclusion is that rtk should work, but it does not. Caveman is not automatically activated, but works (-8%). Ponytail got some positive feedback (-10.3%), but it also won't auto activate; it is the first tool in this series that clearly saved money.

2026-09-23 · #llm