Workspace Scope

Bifrost separates the files that belong to a workspace from the files that receive code intelligence. This lets repositories keep generated, vendored, or otherwise machine-authored build inputs available for file inspection without paying to parse and index them.

Exclude Files From Code Intelligence

Add a .bifrostignore file at the workspace root using Gitignore syntax:

vendor/generated/
src/bindings/*.rs
!src/bindings/handwritten.rs

Nested .bifrostignore files apply relative to their own directories, with the same precedence rules as nested .gitignore files. Bifrost applies these patterns whether matching files are tracked by Git or not.

Matching files are excluded from analyzer-backed behavior. They contribute no declarations or references to symbol search, summaries, navigation, usage analysis, structural queries, policies, diagnostics, or the semantic index.

File Tools Still See Excluded Files

.bifrostignore does not remove a path from the workspace’s file inventory. File-content tools and text-level checks can still locate and inspect matching files. This is useful for checks that verify a generated artifact exists or contains a small expected marker.

This differs from .gitignore. Bifrost’s workspace inventory follows Git’s ignore rules for untracked files but deliberately keeps tracked files visible. .bifrostignore adds a separate, analysis-only boundary for tracked or untracked content.

Explicit One-Shot Sources Win

An explicit CLI --sources selection overrides .bifrostignore. For example, this command analyzes the selected generated file even if an ambient ignore pattern matches it:

bifrost --root /path/to/project \
  --tool get_symbol_sources \
  --sources vendor/generated/parser.c \
  --args '{"symbols":["vendor/generated/parser.c"]}'

Explicit selections are useful for one-off inspection. Ordinary whole-workspace CLI, MCP, LSP, Python, and Rust-library analyzer construction continues to honor .bifrostignore.

Live Sessions

Long-running MCP sessions watch .bifrostignore. Creating, changing, renaming, or removing a root or relevant nested file invalidates the configured analysis scope and triggers a full re-analysis. LSP sessions do the same when the editor reports the change through workspace/didChangeWatchedFiles. File-level tools continue to use the complete workspace inventory before and after that refresh.