Understanding LLM Context Windows and Token Limits

Context windows define how much text an LLM can process at once.

Learn to work within token limits for better results.

What is a Context Window?

The maximum number of tokens an LLM can process in a single request.

Context Window Sizes

GPT-3.5: 4K tokens

GPT-4: 8K-32K tokens

GPT-4 Turbo: 128K tokens

Claude 3: 200K tokens

DeepSeek: 64K tokens

Strategies for Long Documents

1. Chunking: Split into smaller pieces

2. Summarization: Reduce content size

3. RAG: Use retrieval-augmented generation

4. Sliding window: Process in sections

Code Example: Chunking

def chunk_text(text, max_tokens=4000):

words = text.split()

chunks = []

for i in range(0, len(words), max_tokens):

chunks.append(‘ ‘.join(words[i:i+max_tokens]))

return chunks

Best Practices

✅ Reserve tokens for system prompt

✅ Leave room for model response

✅ Use compression techniques

Conclusion

Understanding context windows is crucial for LLM applications!

Leave a Comment