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Sentence-Aware Token Windowing
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Sentence-Aware Token Windowing

HardPython

Problem

Implement a custom token-window sliding algorithm that respects sentence boundaries while chunking large scientific papers.

Implement chunk_paper(text, max_tokens, overlap_tokens). Normalize whitespace, split sentences only after ., !, or ?, and return chunks containing complete sentences. Each chunk should greedily include as many sentences as possible without exceeding max_tokens. When another chunk is needed, begin it with the smallest number of complete sentences from the previous chunk whose total token count is at least overlap_tokens. If a sentence alone exceeds max_tokens, return it as its own chunk. Return an empty list for blank input.

Contract

text is a string, and the token count is the number of whitespace-separated words. max_tokens is positive and overlap_tokens is nonnegative. Return a list of strings.

Constraints

  • 1 <= len(text) <= 100000
  • 1 <= max_tokens <= 100000
  • 0 <= overlap_tokens <= max_tokens
  • Tokens are separated by one or more whitespace characters
  • Sentence boundaries occur only after '.', '!', or '?' followed by whitespace or the end of the text

Function Signature

def chunk_paper(text, max_tokens, overlap_tokens):
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