I built a sophisticated AI service orchestration system, then replaced it with text files. Sometimes the best solution is no solution.
The original system was a FastAPI router on Lightsail routing requests to Lambda functions. It worked. I used it. Then I found a simpler mental model for organizing AI context and rebuilt the whole thing as a flat directory structure with no infrastructure at all.
Before: 8 services, $21/month, 30-plus minutes to set up, 1-3 second response times. After: zero infrastructure, zero cost, under a minute to set up, under 50ms response.
The case study is about recognizing when you are solving the wrong problem. I was optimizing how to connect AI services when the actual problem was how to organize AI knowledge. Those are different problems with very different solutions.