llmview

Reusable views of code for LLM context.

Designed for a middle ground in AI-assisted coding. Rather than copying files manually or letting an LLM agent run its own commands to search your codebase, define views once and reuse them as your code evolves.

Quick start

Install from npm:

npm i -g llmview

Create a .mdx file in your project that describes the context you want to share:

This is my Python backend project.

## Project structure

<llmview treeOnly globs={['**']} />

## Project configuration

<llmview globs={['pyproject.toml', 'Makefile', '.gitignore']} />

## Application code

<llmview globs={['src/my_backend/**', '!src/my_backend/migrations/**']} />

## General documents

<llmview globs={['docs/*.md']} />

## Skills

<llmview frontmatterOnly globs={['skills/*/SKILL.md']} />

## Recent changes

<llmview-exec cmd="git log --oneline -10" />
<llmview-exec cmd="git diff main" />

## The file that generated this context

<llmview globs={['context.mdx']} />

Then render it:

llmview context.mdx

The output is a single document with your prose, file contents, and command output.

Doc format

A .mdx file mixes markdown prose with <llmview> and <llmview-exec> tags. Prose passes through unchanged, while each tag is replaced with rendered output. llmview uses the MDX format to leverage JSX-like component and prop syntax, but it uses a text-only renderer that supports these two tags, rather than React components.

<llmview> tag — include files

Select files with glob patterns. Use ** for recursive matching and ! for negation.

<llmview globs={['src/my_backend/**', '!src/my_backend/migrations/**']} />

Each matched file is rendered in XML format by default:

<file path="src/my_backend/__init__.py" />
<file path="src/my_backend/app.py">
from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)
...
</file>

Props

Every CLI option is also available as a prop on the <llmview> tag. Props set on a tag override the CLI defaults for that tag only.

Prop	Type	CLI equivalent	Description
globs	string[]	(positional patterns)	Required. Glob patterns to select files.
format	string	-f, --format	Output format: xml, json, or markdown.
number	boolean	-n, --number	Include line numbers in rendered files.
tree	boolean	-t, --tree	Include directory tree of selected files.
treeOnly	boolean	-T, --tree-only	Show only the directory tree, no file contents.
frontmatterOnly	boolean	-F, --frontmatter-only	Show only parsed YAML frontmatter, no file body.
list	boolean	-l, --list	List selected files only.
verbose	boolean	-v, --verbose	Print file statistics to stderr.

Boolean props can be written bare (e.g. treeOnly) or explicitly (e.g. treeOnly={true}).

<llmview-exec> tag — include command output

Run a shell command and include its stdout.

<llmview-exec cmd="git diff main" />

View files

For simpler cases, llmview also supports .llmview files. These are plain lists of glob patterns (with # comments), similar to .gitignore:

# Project configuration
pyproject.toml
Makefile
.gitignore

# Application code
src/my_backend/**
!src/my_backend/migrations/**

# Docs
docs/*.md

llmview context.llmview

File handling

Files are handled differently based on their contents or extension:

• Binary files are excluded since their contents are not readable
• CSVs are truncated, preserving the header and the first 10 lines
• All other files are treated as UTF-8 text, with a 250KB size limit

The project's .gitignore files are automatically respected.

CLI options

Usage: llmview [OPTIONS] <VIEW-FILE>

Arguments:
  <VIEW-FILE>    Path to a .mdx or .llmview file, or - for stdin

Options:
  -f, --format <FMT>      Output format: xml (default), json, markdown
  -l, --list              List selected files only
  -n, --number            Include line numbers in rendered files
  -t, --tree              Include directory tree of selected files
  -T, --tree-only         Show only the directory tree (no file contents)
  -F, --frontmatter-only  Show only parsed YAML frontmatter (no file body)
  -v, --verbose           Print file statistics to stderr
  -h, --help              Show this help message
  -V, --version           Show version number

Output formats

Use -f <format> to choose the output format. The default is xml.

XML (-f xml) wraps each file in <file path="..."> tags — the default and usually the best choice for LLM context.

Markdown (-f markdown) outputs syntax-highlighted code blocks:

`backend/main.py`
```py
from flask import Flask
...
```

JSON (-f json) is useful for piping into other tools:

llmview -f json context.llmview | jq '.files | length'

Reading from stdin

Use - to read patterns from stdin. For example, to render all unstaged changes:

git diff --name-only | llmview -

Verbose mode

Use -v to see what files are matched and character counts (printed to stderr):

llmview -v context.mdx > /dev/null

Listing files

Use -l to list selected files without rendering. For example, to zip them:

llmview context.llmview -l | zip context.zip -@