Equation 10 · Part 8 · The Economics, Energy, and Physical Limits of Tool Protocols and the Model Context Protocol
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What this part means
Capital delta attached to a quantity marks a difference between two values of that quantity; the article’s sign convention determines the order.
Its job in the formula
Capital delta attached to a quantity marks a difference between two values of that quantity; the article’s sign convention determines the order.
Full expression→change→Article meaning
The passage around this formula
Model it simply. Suppose a session runs for k turns, and each turn adds on average tokens of new tool result to a transcript that is resent in full on every request, because nothing is evicting or compressing it. The tokens billed on turn i include roughly i tokens of accumulated result history, so the total billed across the whole session is . Doubling the length of a session does not double the bill; it roughly quadruples it, because the earlier results are being paid for again on every one of the later turns. This is not a hypothetical — it is the direct arithmetic consequence of the same design choice OpenAI documents for its own tool schemas: whatever is…
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.
Open the illustrated addition and subtraction in an equation guide →
Sources cited in the surrounding passage
These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.