>”hey, we frequently have very large directories/files that we don't actually want to search, so let's not by default”

>Was this a thing back when the BSD and GNU greps were being developed? Was it common for people to have huge directory trees (e.g., `node_modules` or `.git`) lying around that were causing significant search slow downs? Not sure,

Sure, actually. It was called “build” and it was moved out of source code hierarchy to not interfere with tools. Pretty clever, and you don’t have to patch every tool each time new build-path appears. This should lead us to some conclusion, but I cannot figure out which. Do you?