Glossary
What is context window?
The amount of text an AI assistant can hold in mind during a single conversation.
A context window is measured in tokens, which are roughly word fragments. Everything counts towards it: your question, the pages you paste, the assistant's own replies and any earlier turns in the chat.
When a conversation exceeds the window, the oldest material is dropped or compressed. That is why an assistant can seem to forget a document you pasted twenty messages ago.
Practically, this means sending fewer, better-chosen pages beats sending everything you have open. Trimmed page text leaves more room for reasoning.
In practice
Sending eight trimmed article bodies instead of eight full pages can halve the tokens used while keeping the same answer quality.
Common questions
- What does context window mean in one sentence?
- The amount of text an AI assistant can hold in mind during a single conversation.
- Why does context window matter when you use Claude or ChatGPT?
- Practically, this means sending fewer, better-chosen pages beats sending everything you have open. Trimmed page text leaves more room for reasoning.
- Can you give an example of context window?
- Sending eight trimmed article bodies instead of eight full pages can halve the tokens used while keeping the same answer quality.
Related terms
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