Skip to content

Window starting values

Status: accepted starting-value list for the shipped example providers
Language: British English
Not: a tutorial, a how-to, a second manual, or a flag list

Working figures for chars_per_token, max_context_tokens and max_output_tokens.
Procedures live in the Manual (How to keep requests inside the model’s context window).
Exact keys, ranges and board cells live in the Technical Reference (§2 and §9).

The estimator runs only when all three keys are set. Otherwise the board shows window n/a.
max_context_tokens ((W)) is input plus reserved output.
max_output_tokens ((O)) is the reserved reply and the API max_tokens value.
Input budget is (W - O). chars_per_token is characters divided by this figure, truncated; it is not a vendor tokenizer. There is no runtime default.

Check a change with simulation:

dragiter -s -v -c config-ollama.toml -p prompt.toml -r resource.toml

Starting values

Provider model_name File chars_per_token max_context_tokens max_output_tokens
Ollama qwen3:8b examples/01_md_sample/config-ollama.toml (same triple in examples 02 and 03) 3.8 4096 1024
xAI Grok grok-4.6 examples/01_md_sample/config-grok.toml 3.8 128000 10240
Anthropic Claude claude-sonnet-5 examples/01_md_sample/config-claude.toml 3.8 128000 10240
Google Gemini gemini-3.8-flash examples/01_md_sample/config-google.toml 3.8 128000 10240

When this page and a shipped file disagree, the file in front of you wins.


Pitfalls

Ollama. (W) is the loaded num_ctx, not the library architecture figure. The OpenAI-compatible /v1 API does not set or return num_ctx. Read the CONTEXT column of ollama ps before raising (W). Local Ollama is not a getting-started path.

Grok. Do not paste the vendor 500 000-token window as (W). Long-context pricing starts above 200 000 tokens. Omit none of the three keys: “no text output limit” is not a reason to leave max_output_tokens unset.

Claude. Do not paste the vendor 1M window as (W), and do not set (O) near (W).

Gemini. Do not paste the vendor 1 048 576 input cap as (W) or the 65 536 output cap as (O) on a first run.