Glimpse

A blazingly fast tool for peeking at codebases. Perfect for loading your codebase into an LLM's context, with built-in token counting support.

Features

• 🚀 Fast parallel file processing
• 🌳 Tree-view of codebase structure
• 📝 Source code content viewing
• 🔢 Token counting with multiple backends
• ⚙️ Configurable defaults
• 📋 Clipboard support
• 🎨 Customizable file type detection
• 🥷 Respects .gitignore automatically

Installation

Using cargo:

cargo install glimpse

Using homebrew:

brew tap seatedro/glimpse
brew install glimpse

Using Nix:

# Install directly
nix profile install github:seatedro/glimpse

# Or use in your flake
{
  inputs.glimpse.url = "github:seatedro/glimpse";
}

Usage

Basic usage:

glimpse /path/to/project

glimpse file1 file2 file3

glimpse /path/to/project -e "*.h"

Common options:

# Show hidden files
glimpse -H /path/to/project

# Only show tree structure
glimpse -o tree /path/to/project

# Copy output to clipboard
glimpse -c /path/to/project

# Save output to file
glimpse -f output.txt /path/to/project

# Include specific file types
glimpse -i "*.rs,*.go" /path/to/project

# Exclude patterns
glimpse -e "target/*,dist/*" /path/to/project

# Count tokens using tiktoken (OpenAI's tokenizer)
glimpse /path/to/project

# Use HuggingFace tokenizer with specific model
glimpse --tokenizer huggingface --model gpt2 /path/to/project

# Use custom local tokenizer file
glimpse --tokenizer huggingface --tokenizer-file /path/to/tokenizer.json /path/to/project

CLI Options

Usage: glimpse [OPTIONS] [PATH]

Arguments:
  [PATH]  Directory/Files to analyze [default: .]

Options:
      --interactive              Opens interactive file picker (? for help)
  -i, --include <PATTERNS>       Additional patterns to include (e.g. "*.rs,*.go")
  -e, --exclude <PATTERNS>       Additional patterns to exclude
  -s, --max-size <BYTES>         Maximum file size in bytes
      --max-depth <DEPTH>        Maximum directory depth to traverse
  -o, --output <FORMAT>          Output format: tree, files, or both
  -f, --file <PATH>              Save output to specified file
  -p, --print                    Print to stdout instead of clipboard
  -t, --threads <COUNT>          Number of threads for parallel processing
  -H, --hidden                   Show hidden files and directories
      --no-ignore                Don't respect .gitignore files
      --no-tokens                Disable token counting
      --tokenizer <TYPE>         Tokenizer to use: tiktoken or huggingface
      --model <NAME>             Model name for HuggingFace tokenizer
      --tokenizer-file <PATH>    Path to local tokenizer file
  -h, --help                     Print help
  -V, --version                  Print version

Configuration

Glimpse uses a config file located at:

• Linux/macOS: ~/.config/glimpse/config.toml
• Windows: %APPDATA%\glimpse\config.toml

Example configuration:

# General settings
max_size = 10485760  # 10MB
max_depth = 20
default_output_format = "both"

# Token counting settings
default_tokenizer = "tiktoken"       # Can be "tiktoken" or "huggingface"
default_tokenizer_model = "gpt2"     # Default model for HuggingFace tokenizer

# Default exclude patterns
default_excludes = [
    "**/.git/**",
    "**/target/**",
    "**/node_modules/**"
]

Token Counting

Glimpse supports two tokenizer backends:

1. Tiktoken (Default): OpenAI's tokenizer implementation, perfect for accurately estimating tokens for GPT models.

2. HuggingFace Tokenizers: Supports any model from the HuggingFace hub or local tokenizer files, great for custom models or other ML frameworks.

The token count appears in both file content views and the final summary, helping you estimate context window usage for large language models.

Example token count output:

File: src/main.rs
Tokens: 245
==================================================
// File contents here...

Summary:
Total files: 10
Total size: 15360 bytes
Total tokens: 2456

Troubleshooting

1. File too large: Adjust max_size in config
2. Missing files: Check hidden flag and exclude patterns
3. Performance issues: Try adjusting thread count with -t
4. Tokenizer errors:
   • For HuggingFace models, ensure you have internet connection for downloading
   • For local tokenizer files, verify the file path and format
   • Try using the default tiktoken backend if issues persist

License

MIT