Context Window
Maximum number of tokens a model can attend to in one request.
Overview
The context window is the number of tokens a model can consider at once, covering the prompt and the response together. It solves the problem that a model has no memory beyond what is in front of it, so it bounds how much source material a request can carry. It exists as a hard architectural limit because attention cost grows with sequence length. It is the constraint that makes retrieval necessary rather than optional.
Technology Graph
How Context Window connects to the rest of the stack.
Uses and depends on
- Agent Memory technique AI Agents Agent Memory based on Context Window High ✓ source
- Context Engineering technique Prompting Context Engineering based on Context Window High ✓ source
Applied to
- RAG technique Techniques Context Window used for RAG High ✓ source