General AI term
A unit of text or other input that a language model processes.
Tokens are not always whole words: a word, part of a word, punctuation mark or other text unit may be represented by one or more tokens. Token counts influence context-window limits, cost and sometimes latency.
A Gaiish writer does not need to count every token to be clear. They do need to keep context relevant and know the model's limits when pasting long source material.