Retrieval Cost

Retrieved Chunks Are Input

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

A retrieved chunk arrives from the search rather than from you, so it feels like something the model produced. It is not. Retrieval puts the document into the request, which makes every chunk an input token: priced as input, and re-read on every turn after the one that fetched it. So a document retrieved once is paid for again and again, long after the question that went looking for it.

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⬇ Retrieval Cost worksheet (2 pages)

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18. Context Tax