Recipes

Monorepo: one package

Point lmpack at the package directory:

npx lmpack pack packages/api --budget 100k --out api.md

• Paths in the pack are relative to packages/api.
• lmpack.json is read from packages/api, so each package can have its own.
• .gitignore files from the repository root down to packages/api still apply, so a root rule like dist/ works inside the package.

Monorepo: shared code first

To pack the whole repository but keep shared libraries when the budget is tight, give them their own category and rank it first:

{
  "categories": {
    "shared": ["packages/shared/**", "packages/types/**"],
    "api": ["packages/api/**"],
    "web": ["packages/web/**"]
  },
  "priority": ["shared", "api", "(root)", "web", "docs"]
}

Files that match none of the globs fall back to their top-level directory (packages, docs, …). Categories missing from priority are dropped first.

Review a branch

npx lmpack pack --git-diff main --out review.md

This selects:

• files changed since the branch point with main (the merge base), whether committed or not;
• new files that git does not ignore, even if not yet added;
• other files in the same directories as the changed ones (“neighbors”), so the model sees the context around a change.

Deleted files are not in the pack. Neighbors form their own category that the budget drops before anything else, so with a tight budget the changed files stay:

npx lmpack pack --git-diff main --budget 30k --out review.md

To pack only the changed files:

npx lmpack pack --git-diff main --no-neighbors

--git-diff accepts any ref git understands: a branch, a tag, HEAD~3, a commit hash. The pack contains whole files, not diffs; send the output of git diff alongside it if the model should see what exactly changed.

CI: attach a pack to a pull request

A GitHub Actions job that builds a pack of the changed files and uploads it as an artifact:

name: llm-pack
on: pull_request

jobs:
  pack:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0 # --git-diff needs the base branch history
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 22
      - run: npx lmpack pack --git-diff origin/${{ github.base_ref }} --budget 100k --out pack.md --report report.txt || [ $? -eq 2 ]
      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: llm-pack
          path: |
            pack.md
            report.txt

|| [ $? -eq 2 ] lets the step pass when files were dropped for the budget (exit code 2) and still fails on real errors (exit code 1).

CI: check that a profile still fits

To be told when a profile outgrows its budget, fail the job on exit code 2:

      - run: npx lmpack pack --profile backend --dry-run

Any non-zero exit code fails the step, so this job goes red as soon as the backend selection needs more tokens than its budget.