Equation 9 · The Unit Economics of a Token
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the number of tokens. Read the equation part by part below; each part has a contextual explanation and a link to its mathematical background.
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What the article says around this equation
The nonlinearity that surprises people does not live in this equation, which is linear. It lives in agent loops. Suppose a loop runs for k steps, each step appends roughly a tokens of tool output and assistant text, and the context started at b tokens. The total input billed across the whole loop is then
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