Token
The unit a model reads and writes, roughly a word fragment. Price, context limits and speed are all counted in tokens.
Models never see letters or whole words. Text gets cut into tokens, common character sequences picked up from the training data. English averages about four characters per token, so a hundred words comes to somewhere between 130 and 150 tokens. Code, rare names and non-English text split less efficiently, sometimes into more than one token per character.
You care for three reasons. The context-window is counted in tokens. You pay per token in and out. And any task that depends on single characters, such as counting letters, reversing a string or finding a rhyme, is hard for a model that never sees them.
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Where this comes up
Prompts, configs and tutorials in the library that touch this term.
- GuideUniversal
Turn a messy task into a prompt in five minutes
Most weak prompts come from a task nobody fully described. A five-step routine to fix that before you type, with a worked example.
- GuideUniversal
Summaries you can trust
A summary is a claim about a document, so it can be wrong in the same ways as any claim. Four habits keep it honest.
- GuideUniversal
Briefing a coding assistant: the first message
A coding assistant works from what you tell it and what it can see. Here is what to put in the first message so you spend less time correcting it.
- GuideUniversal
How to check what an AI tells you
A few checks that catch most wrong answers: which claims to verify, how to ask for sources, and why a confident tone tells you nothing.
- CheatsheetChatGPT
ChatGPT commands and keyboard shortcuts
The commands and shortcuts the interface never shows you, in one table. Mostly keyboard, mostly undocumented.
Tested on GPT-5 · May 2026
- GuideUniversal
How to write a prompt that actually works
A short checklist to run any prompt through before you send it: who, what, shape and what to leave out. Those four things separate a specific prompt…