# caveman v2.0.0 — Caveman 2.0.0 — the engine ships

- Product: caveman (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/caveman)
- Vendor: Julius Brussee
- Date: 2026-08-11
- Version: v2.0.0
- Original notes: https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/releases/tag/v2.0.0
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/caveman/releases/v2.0.0

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

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- **added** — Add a compression engine that compresses tool outputs, logs, code, and JSON before sending to the model
- **added** — Add a proxy component to integrate compression into LLM applications
- **added** — Add CLI tool for compression functionality
- **added** — Add SDKs for multiple programming languages
- **changed** — Change licensing model with MIT for skill, CLI, SDKs, kit, evals, contracts, catalog, and extension shell; BSL-1.1 for engine, proxy, MCP, shrink, cavemem-core, and platform with sunset to Apache-2.0 in approximately 4 years
- **added** — Add compression evaluation tools and contracts for measuring compression savings

**Caveman 2 — the engine ships.** v1 shrank the model's mouth (output). v2 adds the ears: a real compression engine that squeezes what the model *reads* — tool outputs, logs, code, JSON — before it ever hits the model. One line in front of any LLM app. Free, local, BYOK.

**The skill is untouched and still MIT.** Nothing about your `/caveman` install changed.

Real run: a 40-record JSON went `16,098 → 1,091 tokens` (93% smaller), byte-safe, fully recoverable via CCR. Savings are **inferred** — measured on your machine, not projected, not "verified."

**Licensing:** MIT for the skill, CLI, SDKs, kit, evals, contracts, catalog, and extension shell. BSL-1.1 for the engine/proxy/mcp/shrink/cavemem-core/platform — self-host your own traffic (incl. production) free; only reselling Caveman-as-a-service needs a commercial license. Sunsets to Apache-2.0 in ~4 years.

**Ships now:** engine, proxy, CLI, SDKs (as the packages resolve). **Coming soon:** browser extension. Install commands and pip/npm/docker badges go live when the packages publish.

Want to help? New content-type compressors are the highest-leverage contribution — check `good first issue`.