.ai/ledger/question/how-big-should-the-brief-budget-be.md

---
kind: question
id: how-big-should-the-brief-budget-be
title: How large should the context brief be?
---

# How large should the context brief be?

## Asked

What token budget makes a brief worth loading every session?

## Answer

Larger than the initial 4k proposal. Standard tier is 12,000 tokens, with lean 4k and deep 25k. At 12k the brief carries the constraint set and the recurring-failure catalogue as content rather than one-line pointers, and still costs about 1 percent of a 1M window.

## Answered By

Ihab Khaled

## Asked On

2026-08-26

## Routed To

docs/akinator-v2-design.md, stage 5