Stdlib or Third-Party? Empirical Performance and Correctness of LLM-Assisted Zero-Dependency Python Libraries

Researchers introduced zerodep, a collection of 40+ single-file Python modules that recreate popular libraries using only the standard library.

Benchmarks showed these stdlib-only implementations are often within 2x of reference performance, and can even be faster in some cases.

Correctness was generally strong, but workloads relying on C extensions remained the biggest challenge.

The study suggests LLM-assisted, dependency-free Python can be practical for many use cases while reducing supply-chain risk.