Equation 4 · Part 7 · The Token Tax of Giving a Model More Tools
addition
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.
Full expression→addition→Article meaning
The passage around this formula
Call this fixed, tool-independent charge . On top of it sits the actual content of the catalogue: for n tools attached to a request, each with a schema costing tokens for its name, description, and JSON Schema of parameters, the tool-visibility component of a single request’s input is . which, if schemas run at roughly a uniform average size , simplifies to T(n) + n . 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…
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 article section
- [4] Pricing ↗
- [6] Function Calling ↗
- [5] Introducing Advanced Tool Use on the Claude Developer Platform ↗
These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.