Intermediate
Open
Free
Keeping a Worktree From Checking Out the Whole Monorepo
You spin up an isolated worktree for a subagent to work in
packages/api/, but by default --worktree checks out the entire
repository to disk — wasteful in a huge monorepo.
What setting scopes it down to just the directories you need?
Solution
The correct answer is "worktree.sparsePaths."
worktree.sparsePaths writes only the listed directories (plus
root-level files) to disk for a new worktree, instead of the whole
repository. additionalDirectories grants extra access to a running
session, it doesn't control what a worktree checks out;
claudeMdExcludes only affects which CLAUDE.md files load; and
--bare skips loading hooks/MCP/CLAUDE.md entirely, unrelated to
what files a worktree contains.
Share this question