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Equation 9 · Part 1 · The Token Tax of Giving a Model More Tools

Symbol T

T(n)T(n)
TT

What this part means

T is a part of this expression. Its role is fixed by the surrounding article and by the operations shown in the formula.

Its job in the formula

T is a part of this expression. Its role is fixed by the surrounding article and by the operations shown in the formula.

The passage around this formula

…the real cost lives. To discover what a server can do, a client still sends a tools/list request, and that response is the full tool catalogue — the same names, descriptions, and JSON Schemas that later get folded into T(n) on every inference call. The specification requires this operation to support pagination: “Pagination in MCP uses an opaque cursor-based approach, instead of numbered pages,” page size is “determined by the server,” and clients “ MUST NOT assume a fixed page size,” with the documentation…

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Learn the underlying idea

A function assigns an output to each allowed input. The expression f(x) means “apply f to x”.

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Sources cited in the surrounding passage

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