from Laconia (Sparta). Spartan speech style: maximum meaning, minimum words.
Claude Code plugin. Spartan brevity. Inspired by 🪨 caveman — same goal, measured savings (see Benchmarks).
How it works
SessionStart hook (bash) injects the rule once per session — laconic mode auto-active./laconic skill reinforces caps if needed: ≤20 words or ≤3 lines, no preamble, no headers, no trailing summaries.- Exit with
stop laconic or normal.
Install
One-liner
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brillcp/laconic/main/install.sh | bash
Adds the marketplace and enables the plugin in ~/.claude/settings.json. Restart Claude Code — laconic auto-activates every session via the SessionStart hook. No /laconic needed.
Manual
/plugin marketplace add brillcp/laconic
/plugin install laconic@laconic
Then /reload-plugins (or restart Claude Code).
Uninstall
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brillcp/laconic/main/uninstall.sh | bash
Removes the marketplace + disables the plugin in ~/.claude/settings.json. Backup written as settings.json.laconic.bak.
Use
/laconic <prompt> — reinforce mode mid-session/laconic:stats — estimate tokens saved this session/laconic:audit — list enabled plugins, flag unused ones, prompt before disabling/laconic:benchmark — run the benchmark from anywhere and print the full results table in the CLI (pass RUNS=N for more samples)
Statusline indicator
Optional. Add to ~/.claude/settings.json:
"statusLine": {
"type": "command",
"command": "~/.claude/plugins/cache/laconic/laconic/<sha>/statusline/statusline.sh"
}
Shows 🪙 LACONIC · ~N tokens saved live in the status bar — counter reads the session transcript and applies a 1.74 expansion factor to estimate savings vs normal mode. The factor varies by model — Opus benefits more, Haiku less — so re-run the benchmark with higher RUNS to refresh it for your setup.
Further token-saving tips
Laconic trims output tokens. To trim more:
- Match the model to the task. Opus output costs ~15× Haiku per token, so each saved token saves more dollars on Opus — laconic + Opus = the biggest absolute savings if you need Opus's reasoning. For trivial work (renames, doc tweaks),
/model haiku is plenty. Set the default in ~/.claude/settings.json ("model": "claude-opus-4-7", etc.) and switch mid-session with /model.
- Audit plugins with
/laconic:audit — every enabled plugin loads tool/skill metadata each turn.
- Trim verbose
CLAUDE.md files, skill description: fields, and hook output — they ride every request.
- Read narrowly (built-in): laconic's rule already steers Claude to
Grep -n pattern file first, then Read offset:N limit:M around the match — instead of reading whole files. Sub-agents recommended for noisy searches so their context stays isolated.
- Push back, don't comply blindly (built-in): the rule weighs performance and best practices and pushes back on bad designs tersely, so brevity doesn't trade away architectural judgment.
Update
/plugin update laconic
Benchmarks
Output tokens for 10 language-agnostic prompts. Claude Code, Haiku 4.5, RUNS=1 (single run — re-run with higher RUNS for median).
| # | Prompt | Off | On | Saved |
|---|
| 1 | Mutex vs semaphore | 973 | 691 | 28% |
| 2 | TCP vs UDP | 1141 | 399 | 65% |
| 3 | Binary search time complexity | 864 | 661 | 23% |
| 4 | JWT authentication end to end | 1387 | 715 | 48% |
| 5 | REST vs GraphQL tradeoffs | 784 | 775 | 1% |
| 6 | CAP theorem | 489 | 575 | -17% |
| 7 | Processes vs threads | 317 | 1204 | -279% |
| 8 | HTTPS handshake | 392 | 1099 | -180% |
| 9 | Big O / Theta / Omega | 1525 | 556 | 63% |
| 10 | Dependency injection | 1843 | 759 | 58% |
| Total | 9715 | 7434 | 23% |
Note: previous totals were single-run and showed variance (e.g. prompt 6 spiked to -29%). The benchmark now:
- runs each prompt
RUNS times per mode (default 3) and reports the median, which damps single-run noise.
- isolates the rule's effect with
LACONIC_BENCH=1 (skips the SessionStart hook for the Off runs) and --append-system-prompt for the On runs — apples-to-apples, no live-settings mutation.
