diff --git a/.gcloudignore b/.gcloudignore
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c00b81a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gcloudignore
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+# What `gcloud builds submit` must not upload. Without this file gcloud falls back to
+# .gitignore, which is close but leaves the build with things the image never needs.
+.git
+.gitignore
+target
+tests/corpus
+docs/img
+bench
+killtest
+*.tar.gz
+*.zip