Exclude files from being used

How can we exclude some files from being read? For example password, secret files? Can we use a regex or something?

This issue might be a duplicate of existing issues. Please check:

pii/secrets censor #3056: PII/secrets censor - discusses censoring sensitive data using regex patterns for critical sensitive values
set readonly and not ignore permissions #3055: Set readonly and not ignore permissions - mentions using .opencodenotignore or config files to prevent certain files from being sent while still allowing reference

Feel free to ignore if none of these address your specific case.

@glennvdv

@glennvdv check out the tip here #3124 (comment)

you need to set OPENCODE_EXPERIMENTAL_WATCHER to true and then add this to your opencode.json

{
    "$schema": "https://opencode.ai/config.json",
    "watcher": {
      "ignore": ["<file-to-ignore>"]
    }
  }

@rekram1-node could suggest other ways I might not know about

claude indeed suggested this, but found no offical documentation for it

yeah the docs might need some update with it added, but then again its just experimental

@OpeOginni

hm @OpeOginni filewatcher shouldnt be relevant

@glennvdv currently the best way to exclude files is to write a simple plugin!

here is an example:

https://opencode.ai/docs/plugins/#env-protection

you can place it in your project:

.opencode/plugin/file-projection.ts

or you can place it globally:

~/.config/opencode/plugin/file-protection.ts

I recommend making the error it throws a bit “prompty” try to really tell the llm to not try to read the files

you can use ts or js and the win is you can do fairly complex logic, maybe this is too much work and there should just be a config option but we would prolly address that at some point

Hi team,
I've built a plugin to support excluding sensitive content from the agent's reach: https://github.com/pjmartos/opencode-leak-proof
It honours .aiexclude files at various locations as well as project-root .gitignore files (.gitignore files in subfolders are still not supported).

It's still in kind of an experimental phase, but early results are encouraging.

I would greatly appreciate any feedback you may have.
Cheers.

@pjmartos

@pjmartos does anyone else respect .aiexclude besides google/gemini out of the box?

@rekram1-node

@rekram1-node I did find some proposals in at least three of the tools in the Agent space to either start honouring that filename when/if sensitive content exclusions are implemented, or to rename the vendor-specific files:

Given the lack of standardization, at the end of the day the file name wherein to store the exclusion patterns would have to be chosen somewhat arbitrarily. The alternatives were either a bit too vendor-specific (.geminiignore, .cursorignore), or move away from the well-known glob syntax (e.g. .claude/settings.json, which is also vendor-specific). I just decided to go with the "lesser of many evils" and go for .aiexclude, in the hope that at least some people would benefit from not having to create yet another file 😅

That being said, any filename proposal (or any other proposal of any kind, for that matter) are more than welcome.
Cheers.

I think this could really do with a simple file like .opencodeignore similar to .geminiignore or .claudeignore that means certain stuff just never gets read!

or maybe lets start thinking about a standard, i dont know what if every one just embraces .aiignore so you dont have to deal with it in each cli ?

We now have more granular permissions so u can exclude dirs, files, etc.

ex:

  read: {
        "*": "allow",
        "*.env": "ask",
        "*.env.*": "ask",
        "*.env.example": "allow",
      },

u can use "deny" to prevent it from being read all together

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Exclude files from being used #3164

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Exclude files from being used #3164

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github-actions commented on Oct 14, 2025

OpeOginni commented on Oct 14, 2025

glennvdv commented on Oct 14, 2025

OpeOginni commented on Oct 14, 2025

rekram1-node commented on Oct 14, 2025

rekram1-node commented on Oct 14, 2025

pjmartos commented on Dec 2, 2025

rekram1-node commented on Dec 2, 2025

pjmartos commented on Dec 2, 2025

zhabiba24 commented on Feb 4, 2026

DavidNorena commented on Feb 4, 2026

rekram1-node commented on Feb 4, 2026

github-actions commented on Apr 6, 2026

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