{"id":22019,"date":"2026-03-26T20:40:54","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/codegen.com\/blog\/glossary\/context-window\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T20:40:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:40:54","slug":"context-window","status":"publish","type":"glossary-term","link":"https:\/\/codegen.com\/blog\/glossary\/context-window\/","title":{"rendered":"Context Window"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A context window is the maximum amount of text, measured in tokens, that a large language model can process in a single request. This includes both the input (the prompt, code, documents provided) and the output (the model&#8217;s response).<\/p>\n<p>Context window size directly impacts what a coding agent can do. A small context window means the agent can only see a few files at a time. A large context window (100K+ tokens) allows the agent to ingest entire codebases, understand cross-file dependencies, and make coordinated changes across dozens of files in a single pass.<\/p>\n<p>As of 2026, context windows range from 8K tokens (older models) to 1M+ tokens (Claude, Gemini). The practical utility depends not just on size but on how well the model retrieves and reasons over information within that window.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","glossary-category":[45],"class_list":["post-22019","glossary-term","type-glossary-term","status-publish","hentry","glossary-category-ai-fundamentals"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.3 (Yoast SEO v27.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Context Window - The Codegen Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/codegen.com\/blog\/glossary\/context-window\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Context Window\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A context window is the maximum amount of text, measured in tokens, that a large language model can process in a single request. 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