tokenbasedness
Tokenbasedness is the degree to which a system represents and processes information as discrete tokens. A token is an atomic unit with identity and a position in a sequence. Tokenbasedness describes design choices, data representations, and interfaces that rely on tokenization, as opposed to continuous or wholly holistic representations.
Domains and manifestations include natural language processing, compiler and interpreter design, data serialization and messaging, authentication
- Advantages: improved interpretability, modularity, and composability; clearer boundary delineation between components; easier auditing and testing; compatibility
- Limitations: sensitivity to tokenization decisions and vocabulary choices; potential information loss through coarse or inappropriate token
- Metrics may include token diversity, token entropy, vocabulary size, and the proportion of processing steps that
- Examples range from a lexer producing tokens for a compiler, to a language model operating on
See also: tokenization, lexical analysis, discontinuous representations, token-based authentication.