Part no. CZ-01 · open source · The packing machine
ContextZip
Packs exactly the right parts of a codebase for any AI tool, in one command.
Built by Deepesh Kumar
The problem
Every AI coding session starts the same way. Hunt down the relevant files, skip node_modules and build output by hand, zip it all, find the zip, upload it. Next session, do it again.
Do it in a hurry and the .env file rides along with everything else.
What I built
An open-source CLI, contextzip (or cz for short), that does the whole routine from the project root with no flags.
The same machine in four more housings: a browser version at contextzipcli.com where files never leave your computer, a VS Code extension that bundles the CLI, an MCP server for AI agents, and standalone builds on npm, Homebrew and Scoop for machines without Python.
How it works
- 01 · Detect
Reads marker files like package.json, next.config.*, pyproject.toml, manage.py, Cargo.toml and go.mod. A monorepo with a Next.js frontend and a FastAPI backend gets both rule sets.
- 02 · Reject
Leaves out dependencies, build output, caches, binaries, logs and everything in your .gitignore files. --git-changes packs only what git reports as staged, modified or untracked.
- 03 · Redact
.env files, private keys, cloud credentials and Terraform state stay out by default. Include a .env on purpose and its values are redacted.
- 04 · Pack
Writes one ZIP with a report of what went in and what was left out, estimates its token count, and puts it on the clipboard as a real file, ready to paste into Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini.
- 05 · Write back
apply-zip writes the AI's changed files into the project and warns before touching anything you've edited since. For a GitHub repo, --pr opens a pull request instead.
Results
- 29★ on GitHub, 10 of them in the first 2 days after launch.
- Ships on PyPI, npm, Homebrew, Scoop and the VS Code Marketplace, plus a browser version and an MCP server.
- Open source under the MIT licence.
Tech stack
- Python
- TypeScript
- MCP
- VS Code extension API
- PyPI
- npm
- Homebrew
- Scoop
On the monitor
The CLI: cz detects the stack and packs one zip.
The browser version: same machine, no install.