A token is a small piece of text that an AI model reads or produces. A token might be a short word, part of a longer word, punctuation, or a piece of code.
Imagine a sentence cut into small pieces before it is handed to the AI. Those pieces are tokens. They are not exactly the same as words: one word may use more than one token, and the exact split depends on the text and the model.
AI tools may count tokens when setting limits or estimating cost. So a token count is not a direct count of how many words you typed.