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Context Window

The maximum amount of text a language model can process at once.

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Definition

The context window (or context length) is the maximum number of tokens a model can consider when generating a response.

Why It Matters: - Determines how much text you can include in a prompt - Limits conversation history in chat applications - Affects ability to process long documents

Evolution of Context Windows: - GPT-3: 4,096 tokens - GPT-4: 8K-128K tokens - Claude 3: 200K tokens - Gemini 1.5: 1M+ tokens

Working with Limits: - Summarize long documents - Use RAG for relevant retrieval - Chunk large inputs - Prioritize recent context

Examples

With a 100K context window, you can paste an entire book into a single prompt.

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