Thinking-Signature Resume Tax
- Entity ID:
ent-20260423-r31a000000048 - Type:
concept - Scope:
private - Status:
active
Description
Quantified tax on long extended-thinking sessions (GitHub #42260): when resuming, encrypted thinking-block signatures from prior turns are replayed as input tokens. 480-message / 33-turn session measured ~156K total resume tokens of which ~38,800 (~25%) were thinking signatures. 54 thinking blocks averaged 3,835 chars per signature, max 13,184. The thinking text fields are empty strings (stripped); only the encrypted signature field survives, but it must be replayed for extended thinking to function. Worst-case resumption with phantom tokens + cold cache approaches ~191-196K tokens before the user types a character.
Key claims
- Thinking signatures account for ~25% of resume token cost
- Worst-case resume can exceed 190K tokens before the user types a character
- The March 23 rate acceleration has three converging causes
Relations
- March 23 Rate Acceleration --[caused_by]--> Thinking-Signature Resume Tax
- Thinking-Signature Resume Tax --[depends_on]--> Thinking Signature Field Proxy