dspy-lite

DSPy with litellm replaced by litelm and numpy made optional.

What this is

• Same DSPy 3.3.1 -- signatures, modules (Predict, CoT, ReAct/ReActV2, RLM, Flex), optimizers (Bootstrap, MIPRO, SIMBA, GEPA, GRPO)
• litellm (100k+ LOC, 70+ transitive deps) replaced by litelm (2.6k LOC, 2 deps)
• numpy moved from core dep to optional [embeddings] extra
• 85% smaller clean install (25 MB vs 171 MB, 34 packages vs 65)
• Unaffected by the litellm supply chain compromise (CVE-2026-33634) — zero litellm code or dependencies

Install

pip install dspy-lite

Supported Python versions: 3.10 through 3.14.

With provider extras:

pip install dspy-lite[anthropic]     # Anthropic
pip install dspy-lite[bedrock]       # AWS Bedrock
pip install dspy-lite[embeddings]    # numpy for embeddings
pip install dspy-lite[deno]          # managed Deno runtime for interpreters
pip install dspy-lite[all]           # everything

Usage

import dspy

lm = dspy.LM("openai/gpt-4o-mini")
dspy.configure(lm=lm)

predict = dspy.Predict("question -> answer")
result = predict(question="What is DSPy?")
print(result.answer)

Everything from DSPy works -- the import is still import dspy.

Loading images, audio, and files

Resource validation never reads the filesystem or network implicitly. Load resources explicitly:

image = dspy.Image.from_path("./image.png")
image = dspy.Image.from_url("https://example.com/image.png")  # explicit network request
image_reference = dspy.Image("https://example.com/image.png")  # provider-fetched URL; no local request

audio = dspy.Audio.from_path("./audio.wav")
file = dspy.File.from_path("./document.pdf")

Applications must validate or allowlist untrusted URLs before calling from_url(); explicit downloads do not provide SSRF filtering.

Disk-cache safety

Disk caches use restricted pickle deserialization by default. Custom cached classes must be registered with dspy.configure_cache(safe_types=[...]). Setting restrict_pickle=False restores unrestricted pickle compatibility, emits a warning, and must only be used when the cache directory is fully trusted. Unsafe or incompatible legacy entries are treated as cache misses rather than retried with unrestricted deserialization.

DSPy 3.3 APIs

This release includes DSPy 3.3.1's typed provider-neutral LM boundary, experimental ReActV2 and Flex, structured native tool-call history, interpreter isolation improvements, optional managed Deno runtime, and GEPA 0.1.4 integration. Review the upstream 3.3.0 and 3.3.1 notes for compatibility changes.

What changed from DSPy

Documentation

Full DSPy documentation: dspy.ai

Development disclosure

This project is maintained with AI-assisted coding. Through 2026-05-14, I used Claude Code with Claude Opus 4.6/4.7. As of 2026-05-14, I use pi with GPT-5.5. The human maintainer remains responsible for what is merged and released.

License

MIT (inherited from DSPy)