6 ms·

Caveman is fun, but the real tool you want to reduce token usage is headroom https://github.com/gglucass/headroom-desktop https://github.com/gglucass/headroom-

Caveman is fun, but the real tool you want to reduce token usage is headroom https://github.com/gglucass/headroom-desktop https://github.com/gglucass/headroom-desktop (mac app) https://github.com/chopratejas/headroom https://github.com/chopratejas/headroom (cli)

kokakiwi 5mo ago
Headroom looks great for client-side trimming. If you want to tackle this at the infrastructure level, we built Edgee (https://www.edgee.ai https://www.edgee.ai) as an AI Gateway that handles context compression, caching, and token budgeting across requests, so you're not relying on each client to do the right thing. (I work at Edgee, so biased, but happy to answer questions.)
- gilles_oponono 5mo ago
  100% agree
- anandvshah 5mo ago
  I have used Edgee.AI and it is amazing.
stavros 5mo ago
I tried to use rtk for the same, and my agent session would just loop the same tool call over and over again. Does headroom work better?
- gghootch 5mo ago
  Way better. You don’t notice it’s there.
  - stavros 5mo ago
    Thanks, I'll try it!
  - selcuka 5mo ago
    Note that Headroom GUI installs rtk by default.
- firemelt 5mo ago
  rtk vibes a product of vibe code
gilles_oponono 5mo ago
Different positionning - headroom compress inputs and open source project - caveman is output and open source - edgee more corporate offer
SnowLprd 5mo ago
This smells heavily of astroturfing. Particularly because Headroom is a paid product, and that fact is not mentioned here or in the GitHub README. Here was my experience… I download and run the Mac application, which starts installing a bunch of things. Then the following happens without advance notice: - Adds background item(s) from "Idiosyncratocracy BV" - Downloads over 2 GB of files - Pollutes home with ~/.headroom directory - Adds hook(s) to ~/.claude/hooks/ - Modifies your ~/.claude/settings.json to add above hook(s) … and then I see something in the settings that talks about creating an account. That's when I realized that this is a paid product, after all of the above has happened. Headroom seems to use https://github.com/rtk-ai/rtk https://github.com/rtk-ai/rtk under the hood. What does Headroom offer over the actually-free RTK? Who knows. At this point I have had it with this subterfuge — I immediately trash the app and every related file and folder I can find, of which there are many. Hopefully I got them all, but who knows. There should have been an easy way to uninstall this mess, but of course there isn't. The lack of transparency here is really concerning.
- gghootch 5mo ago
  Thanks for the feedback, will work on making this more transparent so future users do not have this experience. I did want to call out that headroom is not based on RTK - it includes RTK sure, but headroom cli has a lot more going on under the hood. For more see https://github.com/chopratejas/headroom https://github.com/chopratejas/headroom
  - shapeling 5mo ago
    I installed Headroom to give it a try, quickly decided to uninstall when I realized how invasive it is and requires a subscription. Spent the next few hours having issues with CC where it was asking for permission on every command. It was using absolute paths for all commands - turns out it was running into `zsh: command not found: rtk`. To fully uninstall I had to: - Remove hook from `~/.claude/settings.local.json - rm -rf ~/.headroom - rm ~/.claude/hooks/headroom-rtk-rewrite.sh - launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/Headroom.plist - rm ~/Library/LaunchAgents/Headroom.plist - rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.extraheadroom.headroom* - rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.extraheadroom.headroom

kokakiwi 5mo ago

Headroom looks great for client-side trimming. If you want to tackle this at the infrastructure level, we built Edgee (https://www.edgee.ai https://www.edgee.ai) as an AI Gateway that handles context compression, caching, and token budgeting across requests, so you're not relying on each client to do the right thing. (I work at Edgee, so biased, but happy to answer questions.)

gilles_oponono 5mo ago
100% agree
anandvshah 5mo ago
I have used Edgee.AI and it is amazing.

stavros 5mo ago

I tried to use rtk for the same, and my agent session would just loop the same tool call over and over again. Does headroom work better?

gghootch 5mo ago
Way better. You don’t notice it’s there.
- stavros 5mo ago
  Thanks, I'll try it!
- selcuka 5mo ago
  Note that Headroom GUI installs rtk by default.
firemelt 5mo ago
rtk vibes a product of vibe code

gilles_oponono 5mo ago

Different positionning - headroom compress inputs and open source project - caveman is output and open source - edgee more corporate offer

SnowLprd 5mo ago

This smells heavily of astroturfing. Particularly because Headroom is a paid product, and that fact is not mentioned here or in the GitHub README. Here was my experience… I download and run the Mac application, which starts installing a bunch of things. Then the following happens without advance notice: - Adds background item(s) from "Idiosyncratocracy BV" - Downloads over 2 GB of files - Pollutes home with ~/.headroom directory - Adds hook(s) to ~/.claude/hooks/ - Modifies your ~/.claude/settings.json to add above hook(s) … and then I see something in the settings that talks about creating an account. That's when I realized that this is a paid product, after all of the above has happened. Headroom seems to use https://github.com/rtk-ai/rtk https://github.com/rtk-ai/rtk under the hood. What does Headroom offer over the actually-free RTK? Who knows. At this point I have had it with this subterfuge — I immediately trash the app and every related file and folder I can find, of which there are many. Hopefully I got them all, but who knows. There should have been an easy way to uninstall this mess, but of course there isn't. The lack of transparency here is really concerning.

gghootch 5mo ago
Thanks for the feedback, will work on making this more transparent so future users do not have this experience. I did want to call out that headroom is not based on RTK - it includes RTK sure, but headroom cli has a lot more going on under the hood. For more see https://github.com/chopratejas/headroom https://github.com/chopratejas/headroom
- shapeling 5mo ago
  I installed Headroom to give it a try, quickly decided to uninstall when I realized how invasive it is and requires a subscription. Spent the next few hours having issues with CC where it was asking for permission on every command. It was using absolute paths for all commands - turns out it was running into `zsh: command not found: rtk`. To fully uninstall I had to: - Remove hook from `~/.claude/settings.local.json - rm -rf ~/.headroom - rm ~/.claude/hooks/headroom-rtk-rewrite.sh - launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/Headroom.plist - rm ~/Library/LaunchAgents/Headroom.plist - rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.extraheadroom.headroom* - rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.extraheadroom.headroom