AI Glossary

Context window

Also called context length

What does “Context window” mean?

Context window: How much text, measured in tokens, a model can take into account at once. It covers the system prompt, conversation history, attached documents and the model's own reply. Anything that doesn't fit has to be dropped, summarized or fetched again when needed.

Context window visual guide: How much text, measured in tokens, a model can take into account at once. It covers the system prompt, conversation history, attached documents and the model's own reply. Anything that doesn't fit has to be dropped, summarized or fetched again when needed.
Visual guide Open full size (new tab)

What is an example of “Context window”?

A very long chat may start losing track of early details once older messages have to be trimmed to stay inside the window.

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See also

TokenTermMax tokensTermRetrieval-augmented generationTermPrompt cachingTerm

Same topic

Agent loopTermAgent memoryTermAttention mechanismTermContext engineeringTermIn-context learningTerm