📝 generate-context

Effortless context file generator for AI, LLMs, prompt engineering, code agents & embeddings.
Recursively grabs your codebase, filters noise, and spits out clean, LLM-friendly context files. 🚀

🚀 Features

• Recursively scans files & nested folders
• Fully configurable file filtering
• Priority files ordering (put your important files on top!)
• Auto prioritizes README.md by default
• Works for files at any depth
• Exclude unwanted folders, extensions, or specific files
• Supports both CLI args & config file
• Friendly CLI: supports comma-separated OR space-separated inputs
• Dry-run mode to preview files
• Clean, LLM-friendly output format
• Beautiful colored CLI output 🎨
• Fast & lightweight pure Node.js CLI

📦 Installation

Clone the repo & install dependencies:

git clone <your-repo-url>
cd generate-context
npm install

Optional: link globally:

npm link

Or:

npm install -g .

⚡ Quick Usage

generate-context

Scans current directory and creates prompt-context.txt like:

FILE: /src/file1.js
BEGIN FILE CONTENT
<file content here>
END FILE CONTENT

FILE: /public/index.html
BEGIN FILE CONTENT
<file content here>
END FILE CONTENT

🔧 CLI Options

| Option | Description | Default | | ----------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | -p, --path <path> | Path to scan | . | | -o, --output <filename> | Output filename | prompt-context.txt | | -F, --ignore-folders [folders...] | Folders to ignore (space/comma separated) | .git .vscode node_modules dist | | -f, --ignore-files [files...] | Files to ignore (space/comma separated) | .env package-lock.json .generatecontextrc.json prompt-context.txt | | -e, --ignore-extensions [extensions...] | Extensions to ignore (space/comma separated, no dot) | bat log tmp | | -P, --priority-files [files...] | Files to always place on top (space/comma separated, any path) | README.md always default | | -d, --dry-run | Show files that would be included without writing | false |

✅ Both comma , and space-separated values are supported.

🔧 Config File Support (.generatecontextrc.json)

You can also configure via file in project root:

{
  "output": "my-context.txt",
  "ignoreFolders": [".git", ".vscode", "node_modules", "dist", "coverage"],
  "ignoreExtensions": ["bat", "log", "tmp", "env"],
  "ignoreFiles": ["package-lock.json", ".env"],
  "dryRun": false
}

• CLI flags always override config values.
• Priority files take absolute priority regardless of directory depth.

🔥 Examples

Default usage

generate-context

Custom priority files

generate-context -P index.js bin/cli.js src/app.js

Scan specific folder

generate-context -p ./src

Change output filename

generate-context -o context.txt

Ignore folders

generate-context -F dist .cache coverage
# OR
generate-context --ignore-folders dist,.cache,coverage

Ignore file extensions

generate-context -e log tmp env
# OR
generate-context --ignore-extensions log,tmp,env

Ignore specific files

generate-context -f .env .DS_Store package-lock.json
# OR
generate-context --ignore-files .env,.DS_Store,package-lock.json

Combine everything

generate-context -p ./backend -o my-context.txt -F dist .cache -e log tmp -f .env package-lock.json -P index.js schema/prisma/schema.prisma -d

Dry-run mode

generate-context -d

📊 Output format (LLM optimized)

FILE: /relative/path/to/file.js
BEGIN FILE CONTENT
<actual file content>
END FILE CONTENT

• ✅ Easy to parse
• ✅ No YAML or JSON headaches
• ✅ Perfect for LLM context injection

💡 Why this tool?

LLMs work better with clean, structured context from your codebase. generate-context helps you package your files into simple, predictable formats for:

• AI agents
• Embeddings
• Prompt chains
• Fine-tuning data prep
• Code summarization pipelines

🤝 Contribute

Got ideas? Found bugs? Issues, PRs, and feedback always welcome!

Made with ❤️ by Mihir Patel