Context window vs daily tokens
AI coding tools show two token numbers, and they measure different things. Once you see the difference, the gap between them stops being alarming.
ctx — the live context window
How full one session's conversation is right now. The context window is the model's working memory for that chat; as it fills, the gauge climbs and turns red near the limit. It resets when the conversation does. This is a point-in-time measure of a single session.
TODAY — cumulative daily tokens
Every token used across all sessions today, including cache re-reads. Each turn re-reads the whole context, so the same content is counted many times over a day — which is why this number runs far larger than any single context window. It grows all day and resets at midnight.
Why is the daily number so much bigger?
Because a context window is measured once (how full the chat is), while daily
tokens accumulate every turn. A 200K-token context that you talk to for an hour can
bill millions of tokens for the day, most of them cache reads. Tama shows both so you can
watch a session's headroom (ctx) and your overall daily usage (TODAY)
without confusing one for the other.
See it in context in the setup guide, or back to the overview.