Disable Cache in Claude Code | Generated by AI
In Claude Code, that snippet
"cache_control": {
"type": "ephemeral"
}
means that the response (or artifact) produced by the model is not cached for reuse.
Why it exists
Normally, Claude Code (and other Anthropic SDKs) may cache responses to speed things up if you send the same prompt again. But when you set "cache_control": { "type": "ephemeral" }, you’re telling the API:
- Don’t persist this result in the cache.
- Don’t reuse it if another identical request comes later.
- Treat the response as short-lived—only for this call.
When to use
This is useful if:
- Your request includes sensitive or personal data you don’t want cached.
- You’re sending one-off queries that wouldn’t benefit from reuse.
- You want fresh output each time, even if the request text is identical.
In short, "ephemeral" makes Claude’s output transient—private to this interaction, with no caching across calls.
Would you like me to also explain how this differs from the default cache_control behavior in Claude Code (e.g. type: "default" vs "none" vs "ephemeral")?