Give your Ai assistant a map of your project

Jun 26, 2025

2 minutes

One of the things I am really bad at is deciding where to put a file in a project. I realized that I can let AI solve that for me by giving it more context on the project with a map of the project or a specific folder. I like to use tree to get this.

Using tree

In Aider I /run tree -I node_modules and add it to the chat. Then I /ask Aider where to put the file I want to create.

This is what the tree output looks like from the command above. -I is ignore.

├── jsconfig.json
├── package.json
├── pnpm-lock.yaml
├── README.md
├── src
│   ├── app.css
│   ├── app.html
│   ├── lib
│   │   └── images
│   │       ├── github.svg
│   │       ├── svelte-logo.svg
│   │       ├── svelte-welcome.png
│   │       └── svelte-welcome.webp
│   └── routes
│       ├── +layout.svelte
│       ├── +page.js
│       ├── +page.svelte
│       ├── about
│       │   ├── +page.js
│       │   └── +page.svelte
│       ├── Counter.svelte
│       ├── Header.svelte
│       └── sverdle
│           ├── +page.server.js
│           ├── +page.svelte
│           ├── game.js
│           ├── how-to-play
│           │   ├── +page.js
│           │   └── +page.svelte
│           └── words.server.js
├── static
│   ├── favicon.png
│   └── robots.txt
├── svelte.config.js
└── vite.config.js

Using ls

If you don’t have tree installed you can do this with ls -R1 which will list all the files in a single column.

node_modules/
package.json
pnpm-lock.yaml
README.md
src/
static/
svelte.config.js
vite.config.js

./node_modules:
@fontsource/
@neoconfetti/
@sveltejs/
svelte@
vite@

./node_modules/@fontsource:
fira-mono@

./node_modules/@neoconfetti:
svelte@

./node_modules/@sveltejs:
adapter-auto@
kit@
vite-plugin-svelte@

./src:
app.css
app.html
lib/
routes/

./src/lib:
images/

./src/lib/images:
github.svg
svelte-logo.svg
svelte-welcome.png
svelte-welcome.webp

./src/routes:
+layout.svelte
+page.js
+page.svelte
about/
Counter.svelte
Header.svelte
sverdle/

./src/routes/about:
+page.js
+page.svelte

./src/routes/sverdle:
+page.server.js
+page.svelte
game.js
how-to-play/
words.server.js

./src/routes/sverdle/how-to-play:
+page.js
+page.svelte

./static:
favicon.png
robots.txt

Misc Terminal ways

Unfortunately macOs terminal ls command can’t exclude files or directories. However these commands can.

**ls + grep **

# pipe to grep
ls -R | grep -v node_modules

# pipe to grep with multiple exclusions
ls -R | grep -vE "(node_modules|\.git|dist)"

**find **

# Single exclude
find . -name node_modules -prune -o -print

# Multiple excludes 
find . -name node_modules -prune -o -name .git -prune -o -print

Another alternative for macOs is to install the GNU coreutils

brew install coreutils

gls

# ignore flag
gls -R1 --ignore=node_modules

gls -R1Inode_modules

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