head to head · open source
pi vs caveman
pi has 122,054 GitHub stars, 15,733 forks, 202 open issues and last shipped today. caveman has 120,139 stars, 7,002 forks, 155 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pi leads on adoption by 2% (122,054 vs 120,139 stars). pi is written in TypeScript under MIT; caveman is written in Go under Apache-2.0. pi has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, caveman 6%. pi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| pi | caveman | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 122K | ★ 120K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-15 | 2026-11-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 16K | ⑂ 7.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pi if
- You weight community size — 122K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick caveman if
- You want the caveman feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and caveman fits your workflow better
About pi
New issues and PRs from new contributors are auto closed by default. Maintainers review auto closed issues daily. See CONTRIBUTING.md. Pi Agent Harness This is the home of the Pi agent harness project including our self extensible coding agent. @earendil works/pi coding agent : Interactive coding agent CLI @earendil works/pi agent core : Agent runtime with tool calling and state management @earendil works/pi ai : Unified multi provider LLM API (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, …) To learn more about Pi: Visit pi.dev, the project website with demos Read the documentation, but you can also ask the agent to explain…
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is pi or caveman more popular?
pi has 122,054 GitHub stars and caveman has 120,139. pi has the larger community by that measure.
Are pi and caveman free?
Both are open source. pi is licensed under MIT and caveman under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pi and caveman?
pi is written in TypeScript and caveman in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, pi or caveman?
Choose pi if you want the larger community (122,054 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose caveman if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.