Cost-Aware LLM Pipeline

Patterns for controlling LLM API costs while maintaining quality. Combines model routing, budget tracking, retry logic, and prompt caching into a composable pipeline.

When to Activate

• Building applications that call LLM APIs (Claude, GPT, etc.)
• Processing batches of items with varying complexity
• Need to stay within a budget for API spend
• Optimizing cost without sacrificing quality on complex tasks

Core Concepts

1. Model Routing by Task Complexity

Automatically select cheaper models for simple tasks, reserving expensive models for complex ones.