Surgical Patch

by JuliusBrussee

Surgical Patch is a Quality skill for Claude Code, published by JuliusBrussee in caveman.

97.8K stars5.6K forkson JuliusBrussee/cavemanAdded 2026/08/13Repository updated 2026/08/13

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aianthropiccavemanclaudeclaude-codellmmemeprompt-engineeringskilltokens

Install in seconds

Install Surgical Patch

Copy Surgical Patch into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman/tree/main/skills/surgical-patch ~/.claude/skills/surgical-patch

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: skills/surgical-patch/SKILL.md in JuliusBrussee/caveman
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/surgical-patch
Collection: One of 20 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: Quality — 1354 skills

What Surgical Patch does

Surgical Patch fixes bugs and small behavior changes at the narrowest responsible layer. Use Surgical Patch when regression proof, preserved surrounding behavior, and task-relevant tests matter.

Surgical Patch is cataloged under Quality on DirSkills. Surgical Patch comes from a repository tagged ai, anthropic, caveman, claude and claude-code.

Documentation

README

From the original repository

Surgical patch

Reproduce failure first when economical; otherwise capture strongest available evidence.

Trace symptom to responsible mechanism.
Change narrowest layer that owns incorrect behavior.
Preserve unrelated behavior and user changes.
Avoid cleanup, renaming, and abstraction outside fix.
Add only regression proof relevant to task.

Run focused proof plus nearest affected gate. Stop when failure is fixed and regression proof passes.

Frequently asked about Surgical Patch

What else does JuliusBrussee publish alongside Surgical Patch?
Surgical Patch is one of 20 skills that DirSkills catalogs from JuliusBrussee/caveman, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Cavecrew, Caveman and Caveman Commit. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Surgical Patch does, and is maintained by JuliusBrussee in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the JuliusBrussee/caveman page.
How does Surgical Patch compare to other Quality skills?
Surgical Patch ranks #17 by stars among the 1354 Quality skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Benchmark, Benchmark Optimization Loop and API Design Patterns. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Surgical Patch against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.