Tagged “measurement”
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Counting tokens before you spend them
Why character-count estimates drift, what message formatting adds that you didn't count, and how to build a budget check that fails before the API does.
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How much of your window is earning its place
Every component costs tokens on every request. How to find which ones change the answer, using ablation and citation coverage rather than intuition.
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Size the budget for the tail, not the average
Average requests never overflow. The failures live at p99, where one oversized item or a long conversation breaks a budget built on means.
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Rebudgeting when you change model
A budget is model-specific. Token counts, limits, output caps and position behaviour all shift on a swap. The checklist for porting an allocation.
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Do your few-shot examples still earn their space?
Examples are often the largest block in a system prompt and the least examined. How to run the ablation, and what to do with each outcome.
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Auditing a system prompt nobody trimmed
System prompts grow one patch at a time and nothing is ever removed. How to audit yours by section, delete safely, and keep it from regrowing.