I burned $2,400 in 3 weeks talking to AI like a human
For 18 months, I built AI features the "normal" way: conversational prompts, friendly instructions, "please" and "thank you" sprinkled in. It worked—until our user base 10x'd in January.
Our monthly OpenAI bill went from $800 to $4,100. Same features. Same users. Just more conversations.
That's when I discovered JSON prompting. Not as a nice-to-have. As a survival requirement.
Three weeks after migrating our entire stack, our bill dropped to $1,107. A 73% reduction. Here's the exact system.
