Context Tax

Paying for the Past

Library › Context Problems

1. The Context Window

2. Window Occupancy

3. Growth per Turn

4. Remaining Space

5. Turn Budget

6. Retrieval Footprint

7. Retrieval per Turn

8. Search Rounds

9. Window Sizing

10. Truncation

11. Compaction

12. The Compaction Bill

13. Compacted Retrieval

14. The Compaction Threshold

15. Verbatim Tail

16. Stateless API

17. Retrieval Cost

18. Context Tax

19. Quadratic Cost

20. Cost Forecast

Each turn's bill has two halves, and they behave differently. The answer is the same size every turn, so its half never moves. The input is the whole conversation so far, so it grows by a fixed step, and its half grows with it. Three turns in, the input half has tripled while the output half has not shifted a cent.

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⬇ Context Tax worksheet (3 pages)

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19. Quadratic Cost