I built an LLM caching library to test what AI-assisted development actually looks like
I've been spending my evenings on a personal side project — just learning by building. The latest experiment was wiring up an AI agent into it.
While testing, I caught myself sending almost the same prompts over and over. Same intent, slightly different wording. And every test run cost me real money.
Then a thought hit me: if I'm doing this while testing, real users in production absolutely will too. The first 1000 users of any AI chatbot mostly ask the same handful of questions. The LLM charges you for every single one.
I looked for a good caching solution and didn't find one that ticked all my boxes. So I built llm-cacher — and used it as an excuse to try something I hadn't done before: work with an AI assistant as a real collaborator throughout the entire build. I'd drive, it would implement, and I'd review everything that came out.
