What is functools.cached_property and how does it differ from @property combined with manual caching?

cached_property computes a value once on first access and stores it in the instance's __dict__ under the same attribute name, replacing itself so subsequent lookups skip the descriptor entirely and hit the cached value directly -- faster than a property that manually checks a cache flag each call. It requires the instance to support attribute assignment (no __slots__ conflict).

from functools import cached_property

class Report:
    def __init__(self, data):
        self.data = data

    @cached_property
    def summary(self):
        print('Computing...')
        return sum(self.data)

r = Report([1,2,3])
print(r.summary)  # Computing... 6
print(r.summary)  # 6 (no recompute)