setup-ignore

name	setup-ignore
description	Claude Code setup ignore: workflow guidelines, best practices, instructions, and integration examples

Setup Ignore

When to activate

Activate when starting a new project session, when a user complains about high token usage/cost, or when Claude Code is reading too many irrelevant files (like package-lock.json, dist/, or vendor/). Invoked via /setup-ignore.

When NOT to use

Do not use if the project already has a well-configured .claudeignore file, or if the user explicitly needs Claude to analyze compiled output, minified files, or exact dependency lock versions.

Instructions

1. Analyze the project structure to determine the primary language/framework (e.g., look for package.json for Node, requirements.txt/pyproject.toml for Python, go.mod for Go).
2. Fetch the corresponding template from claudeignore-templates/ (e.g., node.claudeignore, python.claudeignore, go.claudeignore).
3. If a .claudeignore file already exists in the project root, intelligently merge the template rules into it, avoiding duplicates. Do not overwrite custom user rules.
4. If a .claudeignore file does not exist, create it in the project root using the template content.
5. Explain to the user roughly how many tokens/files this will save from being needlessly indexed (e.g., "Ignored node_modules and package-lock.json, which saves ~40k tokens per request").

Example

User: /setup-ignore Claude: I see this is a Node.js project. I have created a .claudeignore file based on the Node template. I've ignored node_modules/, dist/, and package-lock.json. This will significantly reduce your context size and token costs on every turn.