Counting the assembled request

The number a budget subtracts from is the token count of the fully assembled request — rendered template, role markers, system prompt, resent history and every tool schema — not of the prose you authored. Render the request exactly as it will go on the wire and tokenise that, or hand the identical request body to the provider's token-counting endpoint. Do it at assembly time on every request rather than once as a calibration, because every input to that constant belongs to somebody else.

Context window — read the current version at https://daviddominguez.dev/learn/en/context-window/counting-the-assembled-request

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