nbstrip

Fast Jupyter notebook output stripper and git clean filter, in Rust with only two dependencies (serde, serde_json). Cell outputs, execution counts, and transient UI metadata never reach git; your working tree keeps everything for Jupyter. Diffs stay readable, repositories stay small, and megabytes of embedded plotly figures stop hiding real changes.

Install

cargo install nbstrip

Wire a repository (once per clone)

cd your-repo
nbstrip install

This registers the binary as the repository's clean filter for *.ipynb (filter.nbstrip.clean + filter.nbstrip.required in the repo's git config, the attribute line in .git/info/attributes). Nothing needs committing. From then on git add stages notebooks stripped, git diff/git status compare through the filter, and the working tree keeps its outputs.

Because git config never travels with a clone — by design — every clone runs nbstrip install once. A clone that skipped it strips nothing and warns about nothing. Teams can commit *.ipynb filter=nbstrip to .gitattributes so the routing travels with the repo; each clone still needs the one-time nbstrip install to define the filter itself (it is idempotent, and filter.nbstrip.required=true then makes an unwired clone fail the git add loudly instead of silently committing outputs).

What gets stripped

• cell outputs — cleared
• execution counts — nulled (the key stays, as the nbformat schema requires)
• transient metadata — notebook-level signature, widgets, vscode; cell-level collapsed, scrolled, execution, ExecuteTime, heading_collapsed, hidden

Sources, markdown cells, and authored metadata pass through untouched. Output is byte-compatible with how nbformat writes files (1-space indent, sorted keys, trailing newline preserved) and stripping is idempotent, so the filter never churns.

Keeping an output deliberately: tag a cell keep_output (or set keep_output: true in its metadata; notebook-level metadata keeps every cell). An explicit keep_output: false beats a tag. This is the nbstripout convention, so notebooks move between the two tools cleanly.

Other modes

nbstrip notebooks/*.ipynb        # rewrite files in place (Clear All Outputs, but scriptable)
nbstrip -t nb.ipynb              # print the stripped notebook to stdout
nbstrip < in.ipynb > out.ipynb   # stdin to stdout (what git calls)

In-place mode is handy when the local file should shrink too — e.g. after a heavy plotting session; re-running the notebook regenerates everything.

Development

cargo fmt --all --check
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings
cargo test

The lint policy is strict (pedantic/nursery/cargo plus unwrap_used/expect_used/panic); fix findings rather than allowing them. Releases follow docs/crate_release_process.md via scripts/release.sh.

License

Apache-2.0. Modeled on nbstripout and nbstripout-fast; reimplemented from scratch.