AI Cost Optimization: Engineering the Unit Economics

Identical and near-identical requests are common in production; response caching, embedding reuse, and prompt-prefix caching convert repeat work into near-zero cost.

Cost-per-task by feature, visible from day one, with alerts on drift — because the bill that surprises you in month three was visible in week one.

Skipping the discipline this article describes until an incident, audit, or stalled project forces it — every practice above is cheaper adopted early than retrofitted under pressure.