CodeToPrompt

codetoprompt is a powerful command-line tool that transforms local codebases, GitHub repositories, web pages, and online documents into a single, context-rich prompt optimized for Large Language Models (LLMs).

It streamlines the process of providing comprehensive context to LLMs by intelligently selecting, compressing, and formatting project files and remote content.

✨ Key Features

Universal Context Sources: Ingests code from local directories, GitHub repos, web pages, YouTube transcripts, ArXiv papers, and PDFs.
Intelligent Code Compression: Uses tree-sitter to parse code into a structural summary, drastically reducing token count while preserving the high-level architecture.
Interactive TUI Mode: Launch a fast, lazy-loaded terminal UI to visually select the exact files and directories you need.
Flexible Output Formats: Generate prompts in a simple default format, as a single Markdown file, or in Claude-friendly XML.
Automatic File Handling: Natively processes Jupyter Notebooks, samples large data files (like .csv or .json), and respects your .gitignore rules.
Powerful Filtering: Fine-tune your context with --include and --exclude glob patterns.
In-Depth Analysis: Run the analyse command to get a full breakdown of your project's languages, token counts, and file sizes before generating a prompt.
Snapshots and Diffs: Save a JSON snapshot of a project and generate a unified diff against it. Diff is copied to clipboard by default (summary only shown in terminal), or written to a file with --output.

🔧 Installation

Install from PyPI:

pip install codetoprompt

For clipboard functionality on Linux, you may need to install xclip or wl-clipboard:

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install xclip

# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S xclip

🚀 Quick Start

The two core commands are codetoprompt (or ctp) for generating prompts and analyse for inspecting your project.

1. Generate a Prompt from a Local Codebase

Scan your current project, respect .gitignore, and copy a context-rich prompt to your clipboard.

# Long version
codetoprompt .

# Short version
ctp .

2. Generate a Prompt from any URL

Pass a supported URL to fetch and process remote content automatically.

# From a GitHub Repository
ctp https://github.com/yash9439/codetoprompt

# From a documentation page
ctp https://python-poetry.org/docs/

# From a YouTube video transcript
ctp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAkMcPfY_Ns

3. Create a Snapshot (local only)

# Save a JSON snapshot of the current project
codetoprompt snapshot . --output snap.json

4. Diff Against a Snapshot (local only)

# Copies the full diff to the clipboard; terminal shows only a summary
codetoprompt diff . --snapshot snap.json

# Save the full diff to a file instead of copying to clipboard
codetoprompt diff . --snapshot snap.json --output diff.txt

🧠 Features in Detail

1. Universal Context Gathering

codetoprompt can pull in context from almost anywhere.

Source Type	Example Command	Description
Local Directory	`ctp path/to/your/project`	Scans a local codebase, respecting `.gitignore` and applying filters.
GitHub Repo	`ctp https://github.com/user/repo`	Fetches all text-based files and builds a complete project prompt.
Web Page	`ctp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/API`	Strips boilerplate and extracts the core text content.
YouTube Video	`ctp <youtube_url>`	Automatically extracts the full video transcript.
ArXiv Paper	`ctp https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.02155`	Downloads the full PDF from an abstract page and extracts its text.
PDF Document	`ctp <url_to_pdf>`	Directly downloads and extracts text from any public PDF link.
Jupyter Notebook	`(automatic)`	`.ipynb` files in a local project are automatically converted to Python code.

2. Interactive File Selection (`--interactive` or `-i`)

For ultimate control, the --interactive flag launches a Terminal User Interface (TUI) allowing you to manually select which files and directories to include. It's perfect for cherry-picking specific features or excluding noisy test files.

ctp . --interactive

Optimized for Large Projects: The interactive file tree uses lazy loading, meaning it only loads a directory's contents when you expand it. This keeps the interface fast and responsive, even in massive codebases.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                                     |
│                        FileSelectorApp                              |
│           Navigate: ↑/↓/w/s  | Expand/Collapse: ←/a/d               |
|               Toggle Select: Space | Confirm: Enter                 |
│       ✓ = All selected | - = Some selected | ◦ = None selected      |
│ ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────│
│                                                                     |
│ ▶ 📁 .github                                                        |
│ ▼ - 📁 codetoprompt                                                 |
│ >   ▼ ✓ 📁 compressor                                               |
│         ✓ 📁 analysers                                              |
│         ✓ 📁 formatters                                             |
│         ✓ 📄 __init__.py                                            |
│         ✓ 📄 compressor.py                                          |
│     ◦ 📄 __init__.py                                                |
│     ◦ 📄 analysis.py                                                |
│     ◦ 📄 arg_parser.py                                              |
│     ◦ 📄 cli.py                                                     |
│     ◦ 📄 config.py                                                  |
│     ◦ 📄 core.py                                                    |
│     ◦ 📄 interactive.py                                             |
│     ◦ 📄 utils.py                                                   |
│     ◦ 📄 version.py                                                 |
│ ▶ 📁 codetoprompt.egg-info                                          |
│ ▶ 📁 tests                                                          |
│ ◦ 📄 .gitignore                                                     |
│ ◦ 📄 CHANGELOG.md                                                   |
│ ◦ 📄 CONTRIBUTING.md                                                |
│ ◦ 📄 LICENSE                                                        |
│ ◦ 📄 MANIFEST.in                                                    |
│ ◦ 📄 pyproject.toml                                                 |
│ ◦ 📄 pytest.ini                                                     |
│ ◦ 📄 README.md                                                      |
│                                                                     |
│ q Quit                                                              |
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

3. Smart Code Compression (`--compress`)

For large codebases, the --compress flag is essential. It analyzes supported code files and generates a high-level summary instead of including the full code, drastically reducing the final token count.

ctp . --compress

Supported Languages: Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, C, C++, and Rust. Other files (like README.md) are included in full.

Example Compressed Output for a Python File:

# File: codetoprompt/core.py
# Language: python

## Imports:
- import platform
- from pathlib import Path
- ...

## Classes:
### class CodeToPrompt:
    """Convert code files to prompt format."""
    def __init__(self, root_dir, ...): ...
    def generate_prompt(self, progress): ...
    def analyse(self, progress, top_n): ...

Smart Data File Handling: codetoprompt treats .csv, .json, and .jsonl files specially to keep prompts useful without exploding token counts:

Small datasets pass through in full. A file is only truncated if it exceeds data_file_threshold_lines (default 50), so a 12-row config or sample dataset is included verbatim.

Large datasets are cut to the first 5 lines with a truncation note appended.

Repetitive per-record layouts are clustered. When a single directory contains more than data_file_max_per_dir files of the same data extension (default 5), only that many are kept and the rest are summarized in an Omitted Data File Groups section. This stops 50 near-identical JSON record files from drowning out the rest of your code.

Toggle off entirely with --no-truncate-data-files (or set truncate_data_files = false in config) to always include data files in full. Set --data-file-max-per-dir 0 to disable clustering.

4. Adaptable Output Formats

Tailor the output for different LLMs or use cases using format flags.

Format	Flag	Description
Default	(none)	Clean, human-readable format with file paths and fenced code blocks.
Markdown	`--markdown` or `-m`	A single Markdown document, great for viewing or sharing.
Claude XML	`--cxml` or `-c`	Wraps each file in `<document>` tags, a format Claude models handle exceptionally well.

Example CXML Output (-c):

<documents>
  <document index="1">
    <source>main.py</source>
    <document_content>
def main():
    print("Hello, World!")
    </document_content>
  </document>
</documents>

5. In-Depth Project Analysis (`analyse`)

Before generating a prompt, get a high-level overview of your local project's composition and token count. This helps you decide which filters or compression strategies to apply.

ctp analyse .

Example Analysis:

╭────────────────── Codebase Analysis ─────────────────╮
│ Configuration for this run:                          │
│ Root Directory: .                                    │
│ Include Patterns: ['*']                              │
│ Exclude Patterns: []                                 │
│ Respect .gitignore: True                             │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─ Overall Project Summary ─╮
│ Total Files: 47           │
│ Total Lines: 6,033        │
│ Total Tokens: 49,834      │
╰───────────────────────────╯
             Analysis by File Type (Top 10)             
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Extension ┃ Files ┃ Tokens ┃ Lines ┃ Avg Tokens/File ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ .py       │    32 │ 37,901 │ 4,650 │           1,184 │
│ .md       │     3 │  5,069 │   544 │           1,690 │
│ .<no_ext> │     3 │  4,807 │   559 │           1,602 │
│ .toml     │     1 │    827 │   117 │             827 │
│ .txt      │     4 │    582 │    68 │             146 │
│ .yml      │     1 │    361 │    56 │             361 │
│ .yaml     │     1 │    229 │    30 │             229 │
│ .ini      │     1 │     45 │     6 │              45 │
│ .in       │     1 │     13 │     3 │              13 │
└───────────┴───────┴────────┴───────┴─────────────────┘
               Largest Files by Tokens (Top 10)               
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ File Path                                 ┃ Tokens ┃ Lines ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ codetoprompt/core.py                      │  5,037 │   538 │
│ codetoprompt.egg-info/PKG-INFO            │  4,453 │   493 │
│ README.md                                 │  2,910 │   285 │
│ codetoprompt/compressor/analysers/cpp.py  │  2,276 │   272 │
│ codetoprompt/compressor/analysers/rust.py │  2,214 │   271 │
│ codetoprompt/interactive.py               │  2,125 │   270 │
│ codetoprompt/compressor/analysers/java.py │  2,090 │   245 │
│ codetoprompt/cli.py                       │  1,877 │   207 │
│ tests/test_core.py                        │  1,743 │   179 │
│ CHANGELOG.md                              │  1,701 │   183 │

🎛️ Command-Line Reference

Here is the full list of options for the main codetoprompt command.

Option	Alias	Description	Scope
`--output <file>`		Save the prompt to a file instead of the clipboard.	All
`--markdown`	`-m`	Format output as a single Markdown document.	All
`--cxml`	`-c`	Format output using Claude-friendly XML tags.	All
`--max-tokens <num>`		Warn if token count exceeds this limit. Does not truncate.	All
`--include <pats>`		Comma-separated glob patterns for files to include (e.g., ".py,.js").	Local
`--exclude <pats>`		Comma-separated glob patterns for files to exclude (e.g., ".pyc,dist/").	Local
`--interactive`	`-i`	Launch an interactive TUI to select files.	Local
`--compress`		Use smart code compression to summarize files.	Local
`--show-line-numbers`		Prepend line numbers to code.	Local
`--file-max-lines <num>`		Truncate any file exceeding this many lines.	Local
`--file-max-bytes <num>`		Truncate any file exceeding this many bytes.	Local
`--no-truncate-data-files`		Always include data files (`.csv`/`.json`/`.jsonl`) in full.	Local
`--data-file-threshold-lines <num>`		Only truncate data files larger than this. Default: 50.	Local
`--data-file-max-per-dir <num>`		Cap on same-extension data files kept per directory; 0 disables. Default: 5.	Local
`--respect-gitignore`		Respect `.gitignore` rules (default). Use `--no-respect-gitignore` to disable.	Local
`--tree-depth <num>`		Set the maximum depth for the project structure tree.	Local
`--version`	`-v`	Display the installed version number.	N/A
`--help`	`-h`	Show the help message and exit.	N/A

Subcommands

Analyse: codetoprompt analyse <PATH> [--include ...] [--exclude ...]
Snapshot: codetoprompt snapshot <PATH> --output <snapshot.json> [--include ...] [--exclude ...] [--respect-gitignore|--no-respect-gitignore]
Diff: codetoprompt diff <PATH> --snapshot <snapshot.json> [--use-snapshot-filters] [--include ...] [--exclude ...] [--output <file>]

⚙️ Configuration

Set your preferred defaults once using the config command. Settings are saved in ~/.config/codetoprompt/config.toml.

Interactive Wizard: ctp config
Show Current Config: ctp config --show
Reset to Defaults: ctp config --reset

Additional data-file settings (configurable via the wizard or directly in config.toml):

Truncate Data Files: truncate_data_files (default: true). Master toggle.
Data File Threshold Lines: data_file_threshold_lines (default: 50). Files at or below this size are kept in full even when truncation is on.
Data File Max Per Dir: data_file_max_per_dir (default: 5). When a directory contains more same-extension data files than this, only the first N (sorted) are processed and the rest are summarized in the prompt. Set to 0 to disable.

Additional snapshot-related settings:

Snapshot Max Bytes: snapshot_max_bytes (default: 3 MB). If a text file exceeds this size, its content is not inlined into the snapshot.
Snapshot Max Lines: snapshot_max_lines (default: 20,000). If a text file exceeds this line count, its content is not inlined into the snapshot.

Snapshot always requires --output. Diff copies to clipboard by default (summary only printed to terminal). Provide --output <file> to write the diff to a file instead of copying.

🐍 Python API

Use codetoprompt programmatically in your own Python scripts for maximum flexibility.

from codetoprompt import CodeToPrompt
# conceptual imports for a full use-case
# from some_llm_library import LlmClient 

# 1. Process a local directory with compression and XML format
ctp_local = CodeToPrompt(
    target="path/to/your/project",
    compress=True,
    output_format="cxml",
    exclude_patterns=["tests/*", "docs/*"]
)
prompt = ctp_local.generate_prompt()
analysis = ctp_local.analyse()

print(f"Project Analysis: {analysis['overall']}")
print(f"Generated a prompt with {ctp_local.get_token_count()} tokens.")

# 2. Conceptually, you'd then use this with an LLM client
# client = LlmClient(api_key="...")
# response = client.completions.create(
#     model="claude-3-opus-20240229", # CXML is great for Claude
#     messages=[
#         {"role": "user", "content": f"Here is a codebase:\n{prompt}\nPlease explain the main purpose of the `core.py` file."},
#     ]
# )
# print(response)

# 3. Process a remote URL
ctp_remote = CodeToPrompt(target="https://github.com/yash9439/codetoprompt")
remote_prompt = ctp_remote.generate_prompt()
print(f"Generated a prompt from GitHub with {ctp_remote.get_token_count()} tokens.")

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup and guidelines. Feel free to open a PR or issue to get started.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for full details.

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CodeToPrompt

✨ Key Features

🔧 Installation

🚀 Quick Start

1. Generate a Prompt from a Local Codebase

2. Generate a Prompt from any URL

3. Create a Snapshot (local only)

4. Diff Against a Snapshot (local only)

🧠 Features in Detail

1. Universal Context Gathering

2. Interactive File Selection (`--interactive` or `-i`)

3. Smart Code Compression (`--compress`)

4. Adaptable Output Formats

5. In-Depth Project Analysis (`analyse`)

🎛️ Command-Line Reference

Subcommands

⚙️ Configuration

🐍 Python API

🤝 Contributing

📄 License

FilesExpand file tree

README.md

Latest commit

History

README.md

File metadata and controls

CodeToPrompt

✨ Key Features

🔧 Installation

🚀 Quick Start

1. Generate a Prompt from a Local Codebase

2. Generate a Prompt from any URL

3. Create a Snapshot (local only)

4. Diff Against a Snapshot (local only)

🧠 Features in Detail

1. Universal Context Gathering

2. Interactive File Selection (--interactive or -i)

3. Smart Code Compression (--compress)

4. Adaptable Output Formats

5. In-Depth Project Analysis (analyse)

🎛️ Command-Line Reference

Subcommands

⚙️ Configuration

🐍 Python API

🤝 Contributing

📄 License

2. Interactive File Selection (`--interactive` or `-i`)

3. Smart Code Compression (`--compress`)

5. In-Depth Project Analysis (`analyse`)