diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 64d0314e..d74a90f8 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -2,6 +2,9 @@
 dist-newstyle/
 TAGS
 
+cabal.project.local
+hie.yaml
+
 .stack-work/
 stack.yaml.lock
 .hie/
diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index b6ea9c53..96cd4612 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -199,6 +199,11 @@ already comfortable contributing to open source, you can skip to the [Convention
    rather than working in your own fork. For more information, see
    [I have push access to the Swarm repository, now what?](#i-have-push-access-to-the-swarm-repository-now-what).
 
+As a note, if you want to use the Stack tool with [HLS](https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server),
+check the `hie.yaml.stack` file. Pure Cabal should work fine with the defaults,
+but you might want to [add a GHC flag](https://haskell-language-server.readthedocs.io/en/latest/features.html)
+to build docs into `cabal.project.local`.
+
 ### Conventions
 
 We follow a few conventions to help keep everyone on the same page.
diff --git a/hie.yaml b/hie.yaml
deleted file mode 100644
index 4ef275e0..00000000
--- a/hie.yaml
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,2 +0,0 @@
-cradle:
-  stack:
diff --git a/hie.yaml.stack b/hie.yaml.stack
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..db183508
--- /dev/null
+++ b/hie.yaml.stack
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+-- If you want to use HLS with Stack, simply do
+--
+--   cp hie.yaml.stack hie.yaml
+--
+-- the file hie.yaml is ignored, so it will not
+-- show in git status ;)
+--
+-- If you are using Cabal, you can ignore this file.
+cradle:
+  stack: