Token

The basic unit of text that AI language models process. A token is roughly 3/4 of a word — understanding tokens helps you predict AI costs and manage context limits.

Technical definition

Tokens are subword units produced by a tokenizer (e.g. BPE or SentencePiece). Common words map to single tokens, while rare or long words are split into multiple tokens. For GPT-4 class models, 1 token ≈ 4 characters or 0.75 words in English. Every LLM call consumes input tokens (your prompt + context) and output tokens (the generated response), both of which contribute to cost.

How Verabase uses Token

Verabase's BYOK model means you pay for tokens directly at your LLM provider's rate. The Analytics dashboard shows token consumption per agent, per conversation, and per day. You can set token budgets per agent to prevent runaway costs. Verabase also optimizes token usage by chunking your knowledge base efficiently and only retrieving the most relevant context for each query.

Why it matters for support teams

Tokens directly determine your AI operating cost. A support conversation that consumes 2,000 tokens costs roughly $0.01 with GPT-4o-mini. Understanding token economics helps you forecast costs, optimize prompt length, and choose the right model for each use case — a cheaper model for simple FAQs, a smarter one for complex troubleshooting.

Related terms

How Verabase Handles Self-Healing Knowledge

The standard industry approach relies on support agents manually flagging stale content and technical writers updating documentation weeks later. Verabase completely upends this model through an autonomous AI platform that identifies knowledge gaps the moment an AI agent encounters a question it cannot answer.

Rather than requiring manual intervention, our visual RAG engine drafts a proposed fix. It analyzes the context of the user's question, reviews your existing knowledge base for conflicts, and creates a clear, structured article or snippet. All you need to do is click 'Approve'. This ensures your AI agents continually get smarter over time without adding to your support team's workload.

Security First Architecture

Many legacy platforms bolt AI onto their existing infrastructure, creating potential data leaks between tenants or exposing sensitive internal documents to end-users. Verabase is built from the ground up with a Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) architecture, enterprise-grade access controls, and strict semantic boundaries. This means your private engineering documents never accidentally leak into customer-facing agent responses.