Prompt Cache Toolkit

Small helper for working with Claude's prompt-caching feature. Wraps a piece of text (system instructions, documents, etc.) so it can be reused across requests with the cache_control marker Claude's API expects, and gives you simple bookkeeping around cache hits if you feed it usage data.

Quick Start

npm install prompt-cache-toolkit

const { createCachedPrompt } = require('prompt-cache-toolkit');
const Anthropic = require('@anthropic-ai/sdk');

const client = new Anthropic({
  apiKey: process.env.ANTHROPIC_API_KEY,
});

// Define cached context (system instructions, documents, etc.)
const cached = createCachedPrompt(`
You are a code reviewer. Review this code for:
- Security issues
- Performance problems
- Best practices
`);

const response = await client.messages.create({
  model: 'claude-sonnet-5',
  max_tokens: 1024,
  system: cached.asSystemPrompt(),
  messages: [{ role: 'user', content: codeSnippet1 }],
});

// Feed the API's usage block back in if you want hit-rate/savings tracking
cached.recordUsage(response.usage);

console.log(`Estimated tokens saved: ${cached.tokensSaved()}`);

What it actually does

• Formats a string into the cache_control: { type: 'ephemeral' } shape Claude's Messages API expects for prompt caching.
• Warns (via console.warn) if the content looks larger than a configurable token estimate.
• If — and only if — you call .recordUsage() with the usage object from each API response, it keeps a running count of cache creates vs. cache reads, and can report a hit rate and an estimated token savings. Nothing is tracked automatically; the library has no visibility into your API calls unless you feed it the usage data yourself.

Use Cases

• AI Agents: Cache system prompts & knowledge bases
• Document Analysis: Batch process documents with persistent context
• Content Generation: Reusable brand guidelines or style sheets
• Code Review: Consistent review criteria across a team

API

createCachedPrompt(content, options?)

Returns a cache-aware prompt wrapper.

Options:

• maxTokens?: number – Warn if cached content exceeds this (default: 8000)
• ttl?: number – Stored on the instance but not currently enforced anywhere in this library; it's advisory only (Claude's server-side cache TTL is controlled by Anthropic, not by this option).

Methods:

• .asSystemPrompt() – Format for Claude's system parameter
• .recordUsage(usage) – Feed in a response's usage object to update stats. Required before .hitRate() or .tokensSaved() will report anything meaningful.
• .tokensSaved() – An estimate based on recorded cache-read vs. cache-creation token averages, not a value returned by the API.
• .hitRate() – Cache hits / total recorded requests (0–1). Only reflects calls you've passed to .recordUsage().
• .getStats() – Returns the raw counters (cacheCreationTokens, cacheReadTokens, totalHits, totalRequests).

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome.

License

MIT

Sponsored by Ferrow

Part of the ferrow-toolkit collection · Sponsored by Ferrow