llms-furl

Furl llms-full.txt (or llms.txt link lists) into a structured tree of small, searchable files you can assemble into LLM context with standard Unix tools.

``text
├── api/
│ ├── auth.md
┌──────────────────┐ │ └── rate-limits.md
│ llms-full.txt │ ─ npx llms-furl ─▶ ├── concepts/
│ (400KB blob) │ │ ├── context.md
└──────────────────┘ │ └── rag.md
└── examples/
└── sdk.md
`

> furl /fɜːrl/ — to roll up; to make compact. A play on "full."

No vectors, no tools. Just files and bash.

Why filesystem-based context?

> "The primary lesson from the actually successful agents so far is the return to Unix fundamentals: file systems, shells, processes & CLIs. Don't fight the models, embrace the abstractions they're tuned for. Bash is all you need."
> — @rauch

> LLM agents perform well with Unix-style workflows like find, grep, jq, and pipes. Rather than stuffing everything into the prompt, you can keep large context local in a filesystem and let agents retrieve smaller slices on demand — this is filesystem-based context retrieval.

llms-furl turns context selection into a Unix problem, not a prompt-engineering problem.

Install

Requirements: Node.js >= 20.

`bash
npm install -g llms-furl


or one-off


npx llms-furl --help
`

Quickstart

`bash
llms-furl https://vercel.com/docs/llms-full.txt
tree -L 3 llms-furl/vercel.com
`

`text
llms-furl/
└── vercel.com
├── index.json
├── api/
│ ├── auth.md
│ ├── files.md
│ └── rate-limits.md
├── concepts/
│ ├── context.md
│ ├── rag.md
│ └── tasks.md
└── examples/
├── file-upload.md
└── sdk.md
`

Each file is a leaf — a small, self-contained piece of the original document, split along its natural section boundaries.

Now you can use standard Unix tools to build exactly the context you need.

`bash


Find anything related to rate limits

rg "rate" llms-furl/vercel.com/docs

Collect all API-related docs

fd . llms-furl/vercel.com/api | xargs cat

Build a context for "file upload"

rg -l "file upload" llms-furl/vercel.com | xargs cat > context.txt
`

Pipe that directly into your LLM:

`bash
cat context.txt | llm "Summarize how file uploads work in this API"
`

Usage

`text
llms-furl [output-dir]
llms-furl split [output-dir]
llms-furl list [output-dir]
llms-furl remove
llms-furl rm
llms-furl clean [output-dir]
`

Options:
- --debug, -d show split diagnostics and flattening info
- --help, -h show help
- --version, -v show version

Output layout

- URL input defaults to llms-furl/ (for example, llms-furl/vercel.com).
- File input defaults to the current directory unless output-dir is given.
- Output file paths are derived from each page URL (strip leading/trailing slashes and .md/.html).
- If all pages share one top-level directory (for example, docs/), llms-furl flattens it for URL inputs (shown in --debug).
- index.json is written alongside the output and contains a tree plus source (and name for URL inputs).

Split patterns

llms-furl detects common llms-full formats automatically:

- Pattern A: # Title followed by Source: https://...
- Pattern B: ... with frontmatter containing source_url
- Pattern C: # Title, blank line, then URL: https://...
- Pattern D: Vercel-style dash-separated blocks with title: and source:

Code blocks are ignored when detecting boundaries.

llms.txt link lists

If a site only provides llms.txt, llms-furl reads every link in the list,
fetches each page, and writes each one as a leaf file. Relative links are
resolved against the llms.txt URL.

`bash
llms-furl https://cursor.com/llms.txt
`

Integration hints

When output is inside llms-furl/, llms-furl maintains llms-furl/AGENTS.md and may offer to update:

- .gitignore to ignore llms-furl/
- tsconfig.json to exclude llms-furl
- AGENTS.md to add a llms-furl section

In TTY, you get a y/n prompt; in non-interactive runs it prints hints only. Consent is stored in llms-furl/.llms-furl.json.

llms-furl` lets you treat your LLM documentation the way Unix always wanted you to:
as a living, searchable filesystem of knowledge.

Acknowledgments

This project was inspired by opensrc. Thank you for the great idea!