Editing Openai/6970005d-f930-800c-bc75-b44638ae2546 (section)

=== Assistant: Short, honest answer: I don’t have a single fixed number you can rely on. ===
Short, honest answer: I don’t have a single fixed number you can rely on.

Longer, tell-it-like-it-is answer 👇

===== - I can generally handle on the order of ''hundreds of thousands of tokens'' in a single conversation. =====
* The exact limit isn’t exposed to me (or you), and it can vary by: - deployment, - features in use (tools, images, system instructions), - and how the conversation is structured.

===== - Recent messages are weighted more heavily than very old ones. =====
* Very long conversations may have earlier details summarized or deprioritized rather than dropped outright.
* If something is important, repeating or restating it is never a bad idea—it’s like pinning it to the fridge instead of assuming I’ll remember it from six weeks ago.

===== If you’re thinking in human terms: =====
* ✅ A whole novel? Fine.
* ✅ A big codebase or long design doc? Usually fine.
* ⚠️ A months-long chat where nothing is reiterated? That’s where entropy sneaks in.

If you want, I can also explain:
* how token counting roughly works,
* how to structure prompts to maximize effective memory,
* or how this compares to older GPT-4–era models (spoiler: it’s not even close).

In short: big enough to be dangerous, but not magic 😄