Paths-LE

Paths-LE: Zero Hassle Path Extraction

Pull every file path out of the current file in one keystroke

JavaScript, TypeScript, JSON, YAML, HTML, CSS, TOML, CSV and Environment files — and every other file, by text scan

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What it does

Open a file, run Paths-LE: Extract Paths, and every file path in the document lands in a new editor — deduplicate and sort it from there. Works in VS Code and in VS Code–based editors like Cursor and VSCodium (installable from Open VSX).

• Import analysis — extract local imports from JS/TS, including multi-line import statements; npm package names are filtered out
• Asset auditing — every src, href, srcset, url(), and @import in HTML/CSS
• Config review — path-like values from JSON/JSONC, YAML, TOML, CSV, and .env files
• Anything else — Python, Go, Markdown, XML, a Dockerfile: no parser, so a text scan finds quoted filenames and any run carrying a path separator

Install

Use it from an AI agent

The same engine runs as an MCP server, so an agent can call it directly instead of you running a command.

extract_paths(content, format?, filename?, dedupe?, maxResults?)

Returns every path classified as file, relative, absolute or url, with its 1-based line and column. Paths are reported exactly as written — nothing is resolved against a workspace or touched on disk.

The server takes content and returns data — it reads no files and makes no network requests of its own. Published as paths-le-mcp on npm and as io.github.nolindnaidoo/paths-le in the MCP registry.

Configuring it by hand — any host with an MCP config file

Most hosts read a JSON config. Add one entry:

{

"mcpServers": { "paths-le": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "paths-le-mcp"] } } }

-y skips the install prompt on first run. Pin a version if you would rather not track releases — paths-le-mcp@2.4.1.

Prefer not to go through npx on every launch? Install it once and point at the binary instead:

npm install -g paths-le-mcp

{

"mcpServers": { "paths-le": { "command": "paths-le-mcp" } } }

It speaks MCP over stdio and needs no environment variables, no API key and no configuration of its own. To check it before wiring it into anything:

echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}' | npx -y paths-le-mcp

That prints the tool list and exits — if you see extract_paths, the server works.

Across a folder or a workspace

Extract reads the document you have open. A scan reads many files from disk and gives one report.

• The whole workspace: run Paths-LE: Extract Paths from Workspace from the command palette.
• One folder: right-click it in the Explorer and choose Extract Paths from Folder, or run Paths-LE: Extract Paths from Folder and pick one.

A project writes the same path in many places, so the report is the distinct paths, the most widely used first, with how often each is written and where:

# Paths-LE workspace report

my-project · 4 file(s) read · 2 distinct path(s), 4 occurrence(s) in 3 file(s)

./lib/util (3)

• src/a.ts · 1:20, 2:20
• src/b.ts · 1:20

./config/app.json (1)

• deploy.json · 2:14

Could not be read (1)

• bad.csv: Invalid CSV: quoted field is never closed (row 1, cell 2)

That is with paths-le.showPositions on. It is off by default, and then each line is the file and how many times the path is in it: src/a.ts (2). The copy on the clipboard follows paths-le.clipboardIncludesPositions, as it does for Extract.

A file its format reader refused is listed with the reason, never passed over. A malformed CSV that holds a path is not the same as a file that holds none.

A scan reports each path as written. It does not resolve symlinks or workspace-relative paths, whatever the resolution settings say: those describe one document on one machine.

What a scan reads. Files come from disk, so an unsaved edit is not seen. A file over the safety size, or one that is not UTF-8 text, is left unread. It stops at 5,000 files or 10,000 listed occurrences. The report ends with a line for each thing it left out, so a short report is never mistaken for a clean project.

What it skips, and how to change that. Three switches are on by default, and each can be turned off on its own in Settings:

Two lists adjust the result without turning a switch off. To skip more, add a pattern to scanExcludes. To read something a switch would skip, add it to scanAlwaysInclude:

{

// Also skip the test fixtures. "paths-le.workspace.scanExcludes": ["/fixtures/"], // Read the vendored code, though the built-in list skips it. "paths-le.workspace.scanAlwaysInclude": ["/vendor/"] }

Paths-LE: Open Settings opens all of these in the Settings editor.

The built-in list

Folders, wherever they appear:

.git, .hg, .svn, node_modules, bower_components, jspm_packages, .pnpm-store, .yarn, vendor, site-packages, Pods, Carthage, dist, build, out, target, _build, _site, dist-newstyle, zig-out, storybook-static, cdk.out, DerivedData, CMakeFiles, .next, .nuxt, .output, .svelte-kit, .angular, .astro, .docusaurus, .vuepress, .expo, .turbo, .parcel-cache, .cache, .sass-cache, .jekyll-cache, .dart_tool, .pub-cache, .gradle, .kotlin, .cxx, .externalNativeBuild, captures, ephemeral, .symlinks, .swiftpm, .build, .bundle, .stack-work, .zig-cache, .godot, elm-stuff, .vercel, .netlify, .serverless, .aws-sam, .terraform, .venv, venv, __pycache__, .tox, .nox, .mypy_cache, .pytest_cache, .ruff_cache, .ipynb_checkpoints, .eggs, coverage, htmlcov, .nyc_output, .vscode-test, .idea, .vs, xcuserdata, *.egg-info

Files, wherever they appear:

*.min.js, *.min.css, *.map, *.snap, *.lock, package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, npm-shrinkwrap.json, go.sum, *.pbxproj, *.iml, local.properties, output-metadata.json, .flutter-plugins, .flutter-plugins-dependencies, .packages, Generated.xcconfig, flutter_export_environment.sh, GeneratedPluginRegistrant.*, fastlane/report.xml, fastlane/test_output/**, doc/api/**

Not on the list, because they are ordinary folders in many projects: bin, obj, tmp, logs, public, generated. A project that generates those ignores them in git, and the scan reads .gitignore.

The settings that shape a scan are under Settings.

The CLI

The same extraction runs from a terminal or an agent loop: a Rust CLI in crate/ of this repository, sharing one corpus with the extension — crate/fixtures/ — so CI fails if the two ever read a document differently. Install it from npm with npm install -g paths-le (or run it with npx paths-le) or from crates.io with cargo install paths-le. Both install the same command and are held to the same output byte for byte.

It also does the half an editor cannot: resolve what it found against the filesystem it is standing in. Every path gets a verdict — exists, missing, escapes the audited tree, non-canonical, or a symlink with its target named.

Install it from npm (paths-le) or from crates.io (paths-le). Both install the same paths-le command.

npm install -g paths-le   # or run it once: npx paths-le

cargo install paths-le

paths-le .                    # audit a tree; summary on stderr, JSON on stdout when piped

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