Move stable rules into a reusable, cacheable system prompt once, and constrain the response so the model can't ramble — output tokens usually cost more per token than input.
Factor Your System Prompt and Cap the Output
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Conversational filler and apologetic framing get tokenized and billed like any other text. Strip the social padding and lead with the instruction.
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Fence the Output Before It Wanders
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Ask for the Diff, Not the Director's Cut
When revising a long artifact, request only the changed lines as a patch instead of having the model reprint the whole thing.