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Equation 1 · Part 9 · The Economics, Energy, and Physical Limits of Tool Protocols and the Model Context Protocol

addition

Tturn=Tsystem+Ttools+∑i=1nTresult,i+TexchangeT_{\mathrm{turn}} = T_{\mathrm{system}} + T_{\mathrm{tools}} + \sum_{i=1}^{n} T_{\mathrm{result},i} + T_{\mathrm{exchange}}
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

A useful way to see the shape of the tax is to write out what actually occupies a turn’s context budget: Tturn=Tsystem+Ttools+∑i=1nTresult,i+TexchangeT_{\mathrm{turn}} = T_{\mathrm{system}} + T_{\mathrm{tools}} + \sum_{i=1}^{n} T_{\mathrm{result},i} + T_{\mathrm{exchange}}. TsystemT_{\mathrm{system}} is the operator’s own instructions, TtoolsT_{\mathrm{tools}} is the serialised cost of every tool schema currently declared, TexchangeT_{\mathrm{exchange}} is the live user message and the model’s own reply, and the summation term is every prior tool result the session has decided to keep. The point of writing it this way is that TtoolsT_{\mathrm{tools}} is paid in full on the very first turn, before a single tool has been called and before it is known whether any tool will be needed at all. A deployment that registers thirty MCP servers, each exposing a handful of…

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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

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