head to head · open source
caveman vs Jean
caveman has 116,900 GitHub stars, 6,789 forks, 155 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Jean has 1,387 stars, 172 forks, 146 open issues and last shipped yesterday. caveman leads on adoption by 8,328% (116,900 vs 1,387 stars). caveman is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Jean is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. caveman has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, Jean 12%. Jean was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, claude-code), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| caveman | Jean | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 117K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.8K | ⑂ 172 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick caveman if
- You weight community size — 117K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Jean if
- You want the Jean feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Jean fits your workflow better
About caveman
why use many token when few do trick Your AI coding agent bills by the word and writes like it knows that. Caveman make it stop. ▶️ ThePrimeagen reacts: "No way this actually works" 🏆 1 on GitHub Trending · July 2026 · 🥇 1 Repository of the Day on Trendshift · April 2026 1 on Hacker News · 904 points · 366 comments · 8 Product of the Day on Product Hunt 📄 Cited in CAVEWOMAN , an Adobe Research paper that measured caveman style output cutting cost 1.4 to 2.4×, up to 3× · 🧪 Tested by JetBrains on 86 real coding tasks: "costs you nothing measurable in quality" ⚡ One command, no account, no API key. npx skills…
read the full caveman overview →
About Jean
Jean A desktop AI assistant for managing multiple projects, worktrees, and chat sessions with Claude CLI, Codex CLI, Cursor CLI, OpenCode, PI, Command Code, Grok, and Kimi Code. Tauri v2 · React 19 · Rust · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS v4 · shadcn/ui v4 · Zustand v5 · TanStack Query · Pierre Diffs · xterm.js About the Project Jean is an opinionated native desktop app built with Tauri that gives you a powerful interface for working with Claude CLI, Codex CLI, Cursor CLI, OpenCode, PI, Command Code, Grok, and Kimi Code across multiple projects. It has strong opinions about how AI assisted development should work…
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Frequently asked questions
Is caveman or Jean more popular?
caveman has 116,900 GitHub stars and Jean has 1,387. caveman has the larger community by that measure.
Are caveman and Jean free?
Both are open source. caveman is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Jean under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between caveman and Jean?
caveman is written in Go and Jean in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, caveman or Jean?
Choose caveman if you want the larger community (116,900 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Jean if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.