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Equation 14 · Part 3 · The Economics and Physical Limits of Running AI Agents at Scale

addition

τ+δ\tau + \delta
addition

What this part means

Add the term after the plus sign to the term or group before it.

Its job in the formula

Add the term after the plus sign to the term or group before it.

The passage around this formula

Because the API is stateless between calls, step i in the loop must include, as ordinary input, everything that made it into the transcript through step i-1 : the tool results, the intermediate reasoning, the earlier outputs. Call the amount a single step permanently adds to that growing transcript σ\sigma — roughly δ\delta plus oˉ\bar{o} , since both the new material a step introduces and the output it produces become part of what every later step has to resend. Without caching, step i ’s input is not just τ\tau + δ\delta ; it is τ\tau + δ\delta plus the accumulated weight of every prior step, (i-1)σ\sigma :

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Learn the underlying idea

Addition combines quantities; subtraction measures the signed difference between them. Parentheses show what is combined before the rest of the expression is evaluated.

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Sources cited in the article section

These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.