What is smart-tree CLAUDE.md?

A repository guide for Smart Tree, a Rust command-line tool that displays folders in a form useful to AI assistants and provides MCP tools. It documents its architecture, commands, and development checks.

Use it when changing Smart Tree’s Rust code, command-line behavior, MCP tools, tests, or build and installation scripts.

It identifies the standard commands for building, testing, formatting, and linting the project. This helps an agent follow the project’s required checks before proposing changes.

How 8b-is/smart-tree configures Claude Code

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to 8b-is/smart-tree. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/8b-is/smart-tree/main/CLAUDE.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/8b-is/smart-tree

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/8b-is/smart-tree/claude-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/8b-is/smart-tree/claude-md)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/8b-is/smart-tree/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/8b-is/smart-tree/claude-md/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/8b-is/smart-tree/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/8b-is/smart-tree/claude-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 1,650 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 1,650 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.01650	$0.01650
Opus 5.5	$0.00660	$0.00660
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00330	$0.00330
Haiku 4.5	$0.00165	$0.00165

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 897b6caef93b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

smart-tree CLAUDE.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

CLAUDE.md · 120 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 120 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CLAUDE.md

This file provides guidance to Claude Code (claude.ai/code) when working with code in this repository.

Project Overview

Smart Tree (st) is a fast, AI-friendly directory visualization tool written in Rust. It provides 30+ MCP tools for AI assistants and is 10-24x faster than traditional tree.

Build & Development Commands

cargo build                    # Debug build
cargo build --release          # Release build (LTO enabled, stripped)
cargo test                     # Run all tests
cargo test --release           # Run performance tests
cargo test <test_name>         # Run a single test
cargo run --bin st -- --help   # Run locally without installing
cargo fmt                      # Format code
cargo clippy -- -D warnings    # Lint (zero-warning policy)
./scripts/manage.sh test       # Pre-commit bundle: test + clippy + fmt --check
./scripts/build-and-install.sh # Build and install locally (clears shell cache)

Run ./scripts/manage.sh test before opening a PR — it is the canonical pre-commit gate. Async tests use #[tokio::test]; for verbose diagnostics use RUST_LOG=debug cargo test -- --nocapture.

After rebuilding, if st --version hangs, run hash -r to clear your shell's binary cache.

Architecture

Thin-client + daemon model: The st CLI binary is a thin client that spawns an async daemon (std) for heavy lifting and persistent state. The daemon exposes an HTTP API on port 28428 (default).

CLI → Daemon Flow

Most st commands follow this path:

main.rs parses CLI args, initializes logging
Exclusive modes run locally and exit: --mcp, --version, --completions, --man, --security-scan, --terminal, --dashboard, --http-daemon, --guardian-daemon, daemon control flags
Everything else (the common case): auto-starts daemon if needed, builds a CliScanRequest (defined in daemon_cli.rs), sends HTTP POST to /cli/scan, prints response

Daemon Communication

CLI ↔ Daemon: HTTP/JSON on port 28428, authenticated via Bearer token stored at ~/.st/daemon.token
Daemon ↔ Daemon: st-protocol binary wire protocol (6502-inspired opcodes) over Unix sockets — this is NOT used for CLI-daemon communication
Auto-spawn: DaemonClient::ensure_running() spawns daemon in background with setsid (Unix) or DETACHED_PROCESS (Windows), retries with exponential backoff (5 attempts, 100ms→1600ms)

Read the full file on GitHub · 120 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

2mo ago First seen · 120 lines · 1,650 tokens per session scan A 897b6caef93b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

smart-tree CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository 8b-is/smart-tree (272 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 1,650 tokens to every session, about $0.0066 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Building agents Languages Rust ai blazingly-fast context directory filesystem mcp

smart-tree CLAUDE.md next to 6 instructions from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
smart-tree CLAUDE.md8b-is/smart-tree	Instructions file	272	yesterday	MIT	A	1,650	Claude Code
vscode buildNext.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	yesterday	MIT	A	9,719	GitHub Copilot
next.js AGENTS.mdvercel/next.js	Instructions file	143k	today	MIT	A	7,461	Codex, OpenCode
langchain AGENTS.mdlangchain-ai/langchain	Instructions file	149k	yesterday	MIT	A	4,680	Codex, OpenCode
vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	yesterday	MIT	A	5,516	GitHub Copilot
vscode copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	yesterday	MIT	A	3,093	GitHub Copilot
deepseek-harness AGENTS.mddeepseek-ai/deepseek-harness	Instructions file	274k	2d ago	MIT	A	4,313	Codex, OpenCode

smart-tree: Instructions file for Claude Code