Ignoring Files

This document provides an overview of the Qwen Ignore (.qwenignore) feature of Qwen Code. Qwen Code also recognizes custom ignore files configured by context.fileFiltering.customIgnoreFiles, which defaults to the compatibility files .agentignore and .aiignore.

Qwen Code includes the ability to automatically ignore files, similar to .gitignore (used by Git). Adding paths to .qwenignore or a configured custom ignore file will exclude them from tools that support this feature, although they will still be visible to other services (such as Git).

How it works

When you add a path to one of these ignore files, tools that respect Qwen ignore rules will exclude matching files and directories from their operations. For example, when you use the read_many_files command, any paths in .qwenignore or configured custom ignore files will be automatically excluded.

For the most part, these ignore files follow the conventions of .gitignore files:

• Blank lines and lines starting with # are ignored.
• Standard glob patterns are supported (such as *, ?, and []).
• Putting a / at the end will only match directories.
• Putting a / at the beginning anchors the path relative to the ignore file.
• ! negates a pattern.

You can update these ignore files at any time. To apply the changes, you must restart your Qwen Code session.

How to use ignore files

By default, Qwen Code reads .qwenignore, .agentignore, and .aiignore. To use a different custom ignore file, configure:

{
  "context": {
    "fileFiltering": {
      "customIgnoreFiles": [".cursorignore"]
    }
  }
}

.qwenignore is always included when context.fileFiltering.respectQwenIgnore is enabled. Custom ignore file paths are relative to the project root.

Ignore file examples

You can use any supported ignore file to ignore directories and files:

# Exclude your /packages/ directory and all subdirectories
/packages/

# Exclude your apikeys.txt file
apikeys.txt

You can use wildcards in your ignore file with *:

# Exclude all .md files
*.md

Finally, you can exclude files and directories from exclusion with !:

# Exclude all .md files except README.md
*.md
!README.md

To remove paths from an ignore file, delete the relevant lines.