Ignoring Files

This document provides an overview of the Qwen Ignore (.qwenignore) feature of Qwen Code.

Qwen Code includes the ability to automatically ignore files, similar to .gitignore (used by Git). Adding paths to your .qwenignore file will exclude them from tools that support this feature, although they will still be visible to other services (such as Git).

How it works

When you add a path to your .qwenignore file, tools that respect this file will exclude matching files and directories from their operations. For example, when you use the read_many_files command, any paths in your .qwenignore file will be automatically excluded.

For the most part, .qwenignore follows the conventions of .gitignore files:

• Blank lines and lines starting with # are ignored.
• Standard glob patterns are supported (such as *, ?, and []).
• Putting a / at the end will only match directories.
• Putting a / at the beginning anchors the path relative to the .qwenignore file.
• ! negates a pattern.

You can update your .qwenignore file at any time. To apply the changes, you must restart your Qwen Code session.

How to use .qwenignore

To enable .qwenignore:

1. Create a file named .qwenignore in the root of your project directory.

To add a file or directory to .qwenignore:

1. Open your .qwenignore file.
2. Add the path or file you want to ignore, for example: /archive/ or apikeys.txt.

.qwenignore examples

You can use .qwenignore to ignore directories and files:

# Exclude your /packages/ directory and all subdirectories
/packages/

# Exclude your apikeys.txt file
apikeys.txt

You can use wildcards in your .qwenignore file with *:

# Exclude all .md files
*.md

Finally, you can exclude files and directories from exclusion with !:

# Exclude all .md files except README.md
*.md
!README.md

To remove paths from your .qwenignore file, delete the relevant lines.