federbenjamin

Cache Keepalive — Development skill for Claude Code

Development community

Keeps an idle Claude Code session's prompt cache warm, so the session you come back to does not start cold.

How to install Cache Keepalive

This entry records only its repository, not the path inside it, so there is no exact command to give. Open federbenjamin/cache-keepalive and copy the folder into ~/.claude/skills/, or the file into ~/.claude/agents/.

What Cache Keepalive does

Keeps an idle Claude Code session's prompt cache warm, so the session you come back to does not start cold.

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README

cache-keepalive

Keeps an idle Claude Code session's prompt cache warm, so the session you come back to does not start cold

A [Claude Code](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code) plugin for people who leave a long session open, step away, and come back to it. Claude Code caches the conversation's prompt for an hour (five minutes on some plans). Once that cache expires, your next message rebuilds the whole conversation: slower, and it costs more usage. This plugin sends a short ping two minutes before the cache would expire, so the cache stays warm while you are away.

Install

Needs Claude Code; tested on 2.1.295.

claude plugin install cache-keepalive --marketplace federbenjamin/cache-keepalive

It starts in the next interactive session. There is nothing to configure.

Features

Pings only while you are away. A ping goes out only when the session is idle and the cache is between two minutes and fifteen seconds from expiring. Each ping is keepalive ping. Reply only: ok.
Capped per model. At most 12 pings in a row on Opus and Fable, 6 on Sonnet, Haiku and any other model. On the 1-hour cache, that keeps an Opus session warm for about 12 hours.
Ends on a handoff. The last ping asks the agent to write a handoff while the cache is still warm, so a fresh session can pick up from it.
Resets on your own prompt. Anything you type starts the count again.
Stops when pinging cannot help. Two pings in a row that find the cache already cold stop the pings until you are back. So does a change of the logged-in account, since the cache belongs to the account.
Shows what it does. The status line reads keepalive 3/12 while it pings, and says why when it stops.