Stop Your Research Agent Paying Twice: Four Caching Strategies Compared
EnvironmentalDay8864 · reddit · 2026-10-22
After weeks of running research agents, the author found constant repetition: the same search on Monday and Wednesday, the same page scraped three times in one task. Individually cheap calls add up to slower tasks and unpredictable bills.
Four approaches weighed:
- Simple cache keyed on query/URL with expiry — easy, but different data goes stale at different rates
- Results saved to files the agent checks first — works for long projects, gets messy fast
- Vector store of past research — powerful, but too much infrastructure for a side tool
- Prompt instructions like "reuse earlier results" — works about half the time
Two open problems: freshness (news goes stale in a day; an About page lasts months) and visibility (without per-call receipts you can't tell how much spend was repeats). The author asks how others handle agent caching and per-run cost tracking.
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