Your LLM Bill Is 45% Too High. Here's the One Prompt Trick That Fixes It
Most developers ship AI features without looking at the bill. Then the bill arrives, and it's five figures.
Here's the part nobody tells you: up to 45% of your tokens are pure fluff. Filler words, restated questions, "As an AI assistant...", apologie...
layerzero.hashnode.dev4 min read
Archit Mittal
I Automate Chaos — AI workflows, n8n, Claude, and open-source automation for businesses. Turning repetitive work into one-click systems.
Strong framing - most teams never instrument token usage until the invoice forces them to. One thing I've seen help in client automations: adding a small middleware that strips restated context and trims "As an AI..." preambles before the response goes to the user. Pairs well with prompt caching on Anthropic/OpenAI when you have stable system prompts. Curious if you've measured how much the trick saves when combined with structured output (JSON schema) vs free-form text?