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What is your chatbot counting?
Tokens are the pieces of text a model reads and writes.
By Tony Yu / tkal · October 31, 2026 · One-minute visual guide
Little pieces. One message.
Your message ♡
↓Tokens the model can processKeep this bitA token can be a word, part of a word, a character, or another small unit. One word is not always one token.
Why count them?
Text takes up space in a context window. Tokens are a way to measure how much text a model is handling.
Keep the distinction
Tokens are the units. The context window is the working space. Inference is the model doing the work.
Open the original sources
Source links open separately. Mochi’s pictures simplify the idea; the original documents carry the detail.
piece