direct_code_deploy ignores the project .dockerignore (only the bundled template is honored)

[justjkk]

Summary

For direct_code_deploy, the source-packaging step ignores the project's own .dockerignore (and .gitignore). The ignore patterns are read only from the toolkit's bundled utils/runtime/templates/dockerignore.template, so there is no supported way to exclude project-specific directories from the uploaded code.zip. Any large directory not enumerated in the bundled template (e.g. .claude/, caches, data dirs, extra virtualenvs with non-standard names) gets packaged and uploaded.

Where

Two code paths compute the ignore list for direct code deploy, and both hardcode the bundled template:

• utils/runtime/package.py → CodeZipPackager._get_ignore_patterns() (local zip build)
• services/codebuild.py → CodeBuildService._parse_dockerignore() — docstring even states: "Always uses the dockerignore.template to ensure consistent file filtering during zip creation, regardless of source_path configuration."

def _get_ignore_patterns(self) -> List[str]:
    # reads files("bedrock_agentcore_starter_toolkit")
    #   .joinpath("utils/runtime/templates/dockerignore.template")
    # ...no project-level .dockerignore is consulted or merged

The .dockerignore that operations/runtime/configure.py / utils/runtime/container.py generate is only consumed by container deployments (Docker build context) — it is not read by the direct-code-deploy zip packagers.

There is no CLI flag (agentcore deploy --help has no ignore/exclude option), no .bedrock_agentcore.yaml key, and no environment variable to add patterns.

Impact

A repo that keeps a large directory under source_path which isn't in the bundled template gets it silently zipped and uploaded to S3. In our case a 1.6 GB directory (git worktrees under .claude/) would have been packaged; the effective source is ~9 MB. The only workaround today is editing the installed dockerignore.template inside site-packages, which is lost on every pip install / fresh venv.

Repro

1. agentcore configure a Python agent with deployment_type: direct_code_deploy.
2. Add a large directory not in the bundled template (e.g. .claude/, data/, notebooks/) under source_path.
3. Create a project-level .dockerignore containing that directory.
4. agentcore deploy → the directory is still included in code.zip (the project .dockerignore is ignored).

Proposed fix

Have _get_ignore_patterns() (and CodeBuildService._parse_dockerignore()) merge the project's .dockerignore (resolved from source_path / build context) on top of the bundled template defaults. This matches Docker's own behavior and the least-surprise expectation that a .dockerignore in the project root is honored.

Alternatively (or additionally): support an explicit ignore list in .bedrock_agentcore.yaml and/or an agentcore deploy --ignore <pattern> flag.

Environment

• bedrock-agentcore-starter-toolkit 0.3.3 (behavior confirmed identical on the current main, 0.3.10 — _get_ignore_patterns is unchanged and still reads only the bundled template)
• Deployment type: direct_code_deploy
• Python 3.13, macOS