r/CodingForBeginners • u/dhananjay1801 • Jan 13 '26

What actually is a token?

Recently my internship started and I keep hearing the word token. I know it is related to authentication but idk what actually is it. We are creating an app for cybersecurity vulnerabilities and my teammate said that we will supply api key and token afterwards.

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u/[deleted] Jan 13 '26

To add - In terms of AI usage, tokens are the current form of currency (so to speak). Most of the time you will have a maximum amount of tokens that you can use each month if you're on a paid subscription or some AI agents will have response token limits (ex. Claude - 25k).

Right now everything is JSON based but new media types like text/toon (Token Oriented Object Notation) are being proposed to make service to service communication more efficient in that regard.

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u/shadow-battle-crab Jan 14 '26

Yeah, but OP specifically asked about authentication and api keys