DSPy 3.5 ships: 85% smaller installs, LiteLLM now optional
dbreunig · x · 2026-11-11
The DSPy team released 3.5, a foundational 'lighter, faster' release paving the way for 4.0:
- LiteLLM and the OpenAI Python SDK are now optional; DSPy calls providers via its lightweight lm15 engine with typed Request/Response objects, making custom LM call logic far easier.
- Numbers: install size down from 206.7 MiB to 30.9 MiB (-85%), dependencies from 65 to 25 (-62%), cold import time from 1.01s to 0.49s (-51%).
- The Signature interface stays stable — 2022-era programs still run on today's models — while optimization has grown from few-shot selection to fine-tuning, prompt optimization, code rewrites, and decision-threshold tuning.
- Contains some breaking changes; an early enterprise tester says it 'solved all my problems getting DSPy into production.' Install dspy[litellm] if you still need LiteLLM.
Related event: DSPy 3.5 Released with 85% Smaller Footprint(2 posts)→
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