AI RESEARCH
JTON: A Token-Efficient JSON Superset with Zen Grid Tabular Encoding for Large Language Models
arXiv CS.AI
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ArXi:2604.05865v1 Announce Type: new When LLMs process structured data, the serialization format directly affects cost and context utilization. Standard JSON wastes tokens repeating key names in every row of a tabular array--overhead that scales linearly with row count. This paper presents JTON (JSON Tabular Object Notation), a strict JSON superset whose main idea, Zen Grid, factors column headers into a single row and encodes values with semicolons, preserving JSON's type system while cutting redundancy.