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

Third-party Python libraries introduce dependency-management overhead, supply-chain risk, and deployment friction. We study when eliminating a dependency preserves enough correctness and performance to justify the gains in footprint, deployability, and trust surface. Our testbed is zerodep, 44 single-file, stdlib-only Python modules spanning 12 categories, each benchmarked against its reference library. Three performance regimes emerge. Stdlib-only implementations achieve parity (within 2x) in the majority of cases; many outperform their references by 5x-115x where architectural overhead dominates; and a clear cliff appears for C-extension-backed computation (image processing, binary seri...

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