diff --git a/packages/jupyter-ai/jupyter_ai/document_loaders/directory.py b/packages/jupyter-ai/jupyter_ai/document_loaders/directory.py
index 0ce4bb739..2325eb2ac 100644
--- a/packages/jupyter-ai/jupyter_ai/document_loaders/directory.py
+++ b/packages/jupyter-ai/jupyter_ai/document_loaders/directory.py
@@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ def split(path, splitter):
     chunks = []
 
     for dir, _, filenames in os.walk(path):
-        if dir in EXCLUDE_DIRS:
+        if dir.startswith(".") or dir in EXCLUDE_DIRS:
             continue
 
         for filename in filenames: