Token
A small piece of text, often part of a word, that AI models read and write in.
In plain English
Models count everything in tokens: questions, retrieved pages and answers. You will mostly see the word in pricing and limits for AI tools.
In practice
“Plumbing” might be one token. “Unblockable” might be split into three.
Related terms
How AI reads the webPro Context window How much text an AI can consider at once when writing an answer. In practice, and related terms → How AI reads the webStarter Large language modelLLM The kind of AI behind ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, trained on huge amounts of text to understand and write language. In practice, and related terms → How AI reads the webPro Embedding A list of numbers that captures what a passage means, so AI can match it to questions worded differently. In practice, and related terms →