Context Craft

Context Craft

Cherry‑pick files in VS Code and copy them to your clipboard as a clean XML payload—perfect for LLM prompts.

Why?

Stop wasting tokens on boilerplate. Context Craft lets you send only the code that matters.

Key features

• Checkbox file/folder picker in a dedicated sidebar view
• Live token estimate in the status bar and view header; updates as you select files or the workspace changes
• One‑click "Copy as XML" with safe CDATA handling
• .gitignore‑aware collection (top‑level .gitignore per workspace root)
• Binary detection and large‑file truncation (files > 200 kB marked truncated="true")
• Selection persists across reloads
• Refresh, Unselect All, and auto‑reveal active file when the view is visible

Installation

VS Code Marketplace

1. Press F1 → Extensions: Install Extensions
2. Search for “Context Craft” → Install

From source

Development (recommended):

git clone https://github.com/Airizom/context-craft.git
cd context-craft
npm install
npm run watch
# In VS Code: Run → Start Debugging (F5) to launch the Extension Development Host

Package a VSIX (optional):

npm install
npx @vscode/vsce package
code --install-extension context-craft-*.vsix

Requirements: VS Code 1.96+.

Usage

1. Click the “Context Craft” icon in the Activity Bar.
2. Tick files or folders to include. Token totals update live.
3. Click “Copy Selected” (toolbar or Command Palette).
4. Paste the XML where you need it.

Example output:

<code_files>
  <file name="app.ts" path="src/app.ts"><![CDATA[
    console.log("hello");
  ]]></file>
  <file name="logo.png" path="assets/logo.png" binary="true"/>
  <file name="big.sql" path="db/big.sql" truncated="true"/>
</code_files>

Notes:

• binary="true" marks files containing binary content (detected via NUL bytes).
• truncated="true" marks files over 200 kB; their contents are omitted from the payload and token count.

Commands

Add your own keybindings in keybindings.json:

{
  "key": "ctrl+shift+c",
  "command": "contextCraft.copySelected",
  "when": "view == contextCraftFileBrowser"
}

Token counting

• Uses gpt-tokenizer with cl100k_base (approx. GPT‑4/GPT‑3.5 tokenization)
• Binary files and files > 200 kB are excluded from the token estimate
• The status bar and view header display “N files | M tokens” for the current selection

Ignore behavior

• Collection respects the top‑level .gitignore in each workspace root
• The tree view itself shows all files; filtering happens when collecting for copy/token count
• Multi‑root workspaces are partially supported: files can be selected across roots, but relative path values in the XML are computed from the first root

Development

npm install
npm run watch          # incremental TypeScript build
npm run lint           # lint source
npm test               # run tests

See src/test for the test suite. The extension depends on the built‑in Git extension (vscode.git).

Limitations

• Only top‑level .gitignore is used (nested .gitignore files are not parsed)
• Multi‑root: relative path attributes in XML are derived from the first root

License

MIT

Support

Open issues or feature requests on the GitHub tracker: https://github.com/Airizom/context-craft/issues

See the changelog at CHANGELOG.md.