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Equation 4 · Part 7 · The Token Tax of Giving a Model More Tools

addition

T(n)=τ0+∑i=1nsiT(n) = \tau_0 + \sum_{i=1}^{n} s_i
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

Call this fixed, tool-independent charge τ0\tau_0 . On top of it sits the actual content of the catalogue: for n tools attached to a request, each with a schema costing sis_i tokens for its name, description, and JSON Schema of parameters, the tool-visibility component of a single request’s input is T(n)=τ0+∑i=1nsiT(n) = \tau_0 + \sum_{i=1}^{n} s_i. which, if schemas run at roughly a uniform average size sˉ\bar{s} , simplifies to T(n) ≈\approx τ0\tau_0 + nsˉ\bar{s} . Nothing about this term depends on whether the model calls any tool at all; it is the price of the menu, not the price of the order. And critically, because a stateless inference API resends its full input on every request, T(n) is not paid once at the start of a…

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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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