Turn your codebase into a single, LLM-friendly text file.

snapcode is a lightweight shell script that creates a snapshot of your project (directory tree + file contents) to share with Large Language Models (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.).

It is designed to be transparent and safe: it strictly respects your existing .gitignore rules and does not hide or exclude files "magically" (other than the .git directory and binary files).

• Strict Ignore Handling: Respects git ignore rules for any target inside a git worktree. If you haven't ignored a file in git, snapcode will include it.
• Performance: Checks ignore rules before recursing into directories (safe for large projects with ignored node_modules).
• Binary Safety: Automatically detects and skips binary files (images, compiled binaries) to keep the text output clean. Whitespace-only files (e.g. .gitkeep) are correctly treated as text.
• Symlink Safety: Symlinks to files are never followed — they are noted in the output but their targets are not read, preventing accidental leaks outside the project tree.
• Multi-Folder Support: Snapshot multiple distinct directories in a single run.
• Safe Output: Writes to a temp file in the same directory as the destination, then renames atomically — an existing snapshot is never corrupted by a failed run.
• Stable Output: File and directory entries are sorted alphabetically, so snapshots are consistent and diffable across runs.
• Portable: Single-file script. Runs on any POSIX shell (sh, bash, zsh). Works correctly when installed via symlink.

Download the script and make it executable.

Using wget:

wget -O snapcode https://github.com/roldel/snapcode/raw/main/snapcode
chmod +x snapcode

Using curl:

curl -L https://github.com/roldel/snapcode/raw/main/snapcode -o snapcode
chmod +x snapcode

Optional: Move it to your path to use it globally:

mv snapcode /usr/local/bin/snapcode

and update .gitignore file:

# snapcode 
snapcode
snapcode.txt

Run it in your project root. It will generate snapcode.txt.

./snapcode

You can create a snapshot that combines different parts of your system. snapcode will switch contexts correctly for each folder.

./snapcode frontend/src backend/api

./snapcode --output context.md

./snapcode --output - | pbcopy

snapcode relies on your configuration to keep secrets safe.

1. It uses your .gitignore: Ignore rules are applied via git check-ignore, so the target must be inside a git worktree. If you have .env in your .gitignore, snapcode will skip it.
2. No Magic Hiding: If you have not ignored .env (or other secrets), snapcode will dump them.
3. Safety Stop: If the target is not inside a git repository, snapcode will warn you that no filtering will be applied and ask for confirmation before continuing.

Note: snapcode requires git to be installed. If git is not available and --no-ignore is not set, the script will exit with an error rather than silently dumping unfiltered files.

You can add extra ignore rules just for the snapshot without modifying your project.

# Apply rules from .llmignore ON TOP of the standard .gitignore
./snapcode --ignore .llmignore

If your current working directory differs from the snapshot target and has its own .gitignore rules you want applied, use --include-root-gitignore:

./snapcode --include-root-gitignore /some/other/project

This is additive — the target's own .gitignore is always respected regardless.

To ignore all filtering rules and dump every text file found (binary files are still skipped, and .git is always excluded):

./snapcode --no-ignore --yes

• Shell: Standard sh (bash/zsh compatible).
• Git: Required. Used for ignore rule evaluation (git check-ignore). Without git, the script will refuse to run unless --no-ignore is passed.
• Grep: Used for binary file detection. Falls back to od or tr if unavailable (e.g. BusyBox environments).
• Tree: (Optional) If installed with --gitignore support, generates a better visual directory map when no custom ignore flags are active.

The generated report is structured to be easily parsed by LLMs:

===== snapcode Report =====
Generated: Sat Dec 13 14:00:00 GMT 2025

################################################
# SECTION ROOT: /my/project
################################################

===== Directory Tree (/my/project) =====
.
├── README.md
├── logo.png
├── secret_link
└── src
    ├── main.js
    └── utils.js

===== File Contents (/my/project) =====

===== File: /my/project/README.md =====
# My Project


===== File: /my/project/logo.png =====
[Binary file skipped]


===== Symlink: /my/project/secret_link -> /etc/passwd (skipped) =====


===== File: /my/project/src/main.js =====
console.log("Hello World");


===== File: /my/project/src/utils.js =====
export const add = (a, b) => a + b;

When writing to a file, a summary is printed to the terminal:

Done! Snapshot saved to: snapcode.txt
  4 file(s) processed — 3 included, 1 skipped as binary