contextzip

Package exactly the right parts of your codebase and paste it into any AI tool — in one command.

pip install contextzip

Why contextzip

Every AI session starts the same way: hunt down the relevant files, manually skip node_modules, build artifacts, and lock files, zip them, find the zip, upload it. Then do it all again next session.

contextzip eliminates that entirely. Run it from your project root — it detects your stack, applies smart exclusions, produces a lean ZIP, and opens your file manager with the archive already selected. One Ctrl+C and you're done.

Features

• Smart framework detection — automatically identifies Node.js, Next.js, Python, Django, FastAPI, Rust, Go, and Ruby, applying the right exclusion rules for each
• Respects .gitignore — your existing ignore patterns are honoured automatically
• Git-aware packaging — use --git-changes to package only modified, staged, and untracked files; perfect for incremental debugging and PR review sessions
• AI-powered file selection — describe your task in plain English with --prompt and Gemini selects the minimum relevant files automatically, no manual hunting required
• Terminal error watcher — wrap any dev server with contextzip watch to auto-detect errors and package a ready-to-upload debug context in one keypress
• End-of-day / handoff prompts — contextzip eod and contextzip handoff turn a Claude/ChatGPT conversation export plus today's code changes into a paste-ready prompt, copied straight to your clipboard
• Persistent workspace — all generated ZIPs land in .contextzip/ at your project root, discoverable, reusable, and git-ignored automatically
• Warns before it's a problem — flags large (≥ 1 MB) and binary files that AI tools can't read, before you waste an upload
• Handles edge cases — dangling symlinks, unreadable files, and paths outside the project tree are caught and reported, never silently dropped
• Full CLI control — --include, --exclude, --dry-run, --output, all composable

Installation

Requires Python 3.9+

pip install contextzip

With pipx (recommended for CLI tools — keeps it isolated):

pipx install contextzip

Verify:

contextzip --version

Quick start

Navigate to any project and run:

cd ~/projects/my-app
contextzip

contextzip will:

1. Detect your framework (e.g. Next.js + Node.js)
2. Apply the appropriate exclusion rules
3. Create a compressed ZIP in .contextzip/ at your project root
4. Open your file manager with the ZIP selected and ready to copy

Usage

contextzip [OPTIONS]

Subcommands: exclude, include, watch, config, eod, handoff — run contextzip --help for full details.

Examples

# Preview what would be packaged
contextzip --dry-run --verbose

# Package only specific directories
contextzip --include src --include app

# Exclude additional patterns
contextzip --exclude "*.log" --exclude "tests/"

# Package only git-modified files
contextzip --git-changes

# Let AI pick only the files relevant to your task
contextzip --prompt "Change toast color on failed login"

# Preview AI file selection without creating a ZIP
contextzip --prompt "Refactor auth middleware" --dry-run

# Save to a custom path
contextzip --output ~/Desktop/project-context.zip

Python API

contextzip is also usable as a library. All CLI capabilities are available as plain Python functions — no Click, no Rich output, no SystemExit.

from contextzip import get_git_changes, get_files, create_zip

# Get changed files and use them directly
collection = get_git_changes()
for f in collection.files:          # plain pathlib.Path objects
    upload(f)                       # no zip required

# Or zip them and upload the archive
pkg = create_zip(collection, output="/tmp/changes.zip")
with open(pkg.zip_path, "rb") as f:
    upload_to_s3(f)

# Full project scan with filters
collection = get_files(include=["src/"], exclude=["tests/"])
pkg = create_zip(collection, output="/tmp/upload.zip")
print(f"{pkg.file_count} files, {pkg.compressed_bytes} bytes")

All functions default path to Path.cwd(). Errors raise typed exceptions (NotARepositoryError, GitNotFoundError, NoFilesError, etc.) rather than exiting.

AI-powered file selection

The --prompt flag lets you describe a task in plain English. contextzip scans your project, builds a lightweight file map, and asks Gemini to return the minimum set of files needed for that task — typically 2–5, never more than 10. The result is a tightly scoped ZIP with only what you'd actually open to make the change.

contextzip --prompt "Change toast color on failed login"
# → components/ui/toast.tsx, app/login/page.tsx, lib/auth.ts

The ZIP also includes a prompt.txt describing the task, so when you drop it into Claude, ChatGPT, or any other AI tool, it immediately understands what you're trying to do.

First-time setup: --prompt requires a free Gemini API key from Google AI Studio — no credit card needed. On first use, contextzip guides you through obtaining and saving one. You can also skip the setup entirely with an environment variable:

export GEMINI_API_KEY=AIza...

Manage your key at any time:

contextzip config               # show current key status
contextzip config --reset-key   # clear and re-run setup

Terminal error watcher

The watch command wraps your dev server, buffers its output, and packages a debug-ready ZIP the moment you spot an error — no manual file hunting, no copy-pasting stack traces.

contextzip watch -- npm run dev
contextzip watch -- python manage.py runserver

contextzip starts your process normally. You see output exactly as you would without it. In the background, it watches the stream for errors. When one is detected, a prompt appears directly beneath the error output:

╭─ contextzip · error detected ─────────────────────╮
│  Press [D] to package debug context  [S] to skip  │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Press D and contextzip immediately writes .contextzip/debug-context.zip. Your server keeps running — no restart, no interruption.

What's in the ZIP:

On Ctrl+C: If no errors were packaged during the session, contextzip offers one final prompt to capture the full session output — useful when something looked wrong but didn't match a known error pattern.

Supported frameworks: Python, Django, FastAPI, Node.js, Next.js, React. Each has its own error detection patterns and noise filters so the output stays clean across stacks.

Note: watch works best with dev servers that don't read stdin interactively (npm run dev, manage.py runserver, etc.). PTY emulation is not used — on Windows, color passthrough may be limited.

End-of-day reports and chat handoffs

If you work through a problem in a Claude or ChatGPT conversation and need to either (a) summarize what you did for an end-of-day report, or (b) continue the same work in a fresh chat after hitting a usage limit, eod and handoff build the prompt for you — contextzip does no summarizing itself; that's left to whichever AI tool you paste the result into.

contextzip eod
contextzip handoff

Setup: export your conversation (any markdown export works) and drop the .md file into exports/ at your project root. Both commands pick the most recently modified file there automatically.

What gets built:

• The conversation itself — pasted directly into the prompt if it's short, or referenced as an attachment if it's long enough that inlining it would burn through the next chat's context budget
• Whatever code changed, resolved per file in priority order:
  1. Not pushed — diffed against your upstream branch, plus the complete current file
  2. Diverged from Claude — diffed against the version Claude last produced (if you've set up a session key — see below), plus the complete current codebase file
  3. Since last run — diffed against a per-branch checkpoint that eod/handoff remember automatically, plus the complete current file
• New, untracked files are included as full content (there's nothing to diff them against)
• eod ends the prompt with a flat instruction to produce a work-log table; handoff frames it as continuing the project in a new chat

The result is copied straight to your clipboard, and also saved to .contextzip/ if you want to look it over first.

Optional — diffing against Claude's own version (case 2): if you give contextzip your Claude.ai session key, eod/handoff will fetch the files Claude actually produced and compare them against your codebase, catching drift even after everything's pushed and in sync.

contextzip config --set-session-key

This is best-effort by design — it depends on an undocumented Claude.ai endpoint, so a missing key, an expired cookie, or the endpoint changing shape just skips this check with a warning rather than failing the whole command.

contextzip eod --dry-run        # preview without advancing the checkpoint
contextzip handoff --no-fetch   # skip the Claude-artifact fetch for this run

What gets excluded

contextzip stacks exclusion rules based on your detected stack, on top of your .gitignore.

Always excluded: .git/, .env files, logs, caches, editor config (.vscode/, .idea/), OS files (.DS_Store, Thumbs.db), common binary formats, and contextzip's own .contextzip/ and exports/ working folders.

By framework:

Detection is additive — a monorepo with both package.json and pyproject.toml gets both rule sets applied.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — especially new framework rule sets, edge case fixes, and platform-specific clipboard improvements.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for local setup, how to add a new framework, and PR guidelines. Please open an issue before starting a large PR so we can align on the approach first.

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.