diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index e5ac5d1..de74849 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ build-backend = "hatchling.build"
 
 [project]
 name = "vibeshed"
-version = "0.2.0"
+version = "0.2.1"
 description = "Vibe Coding Framework for Personal Automations — agent-agnostic CLI for vibe-coded jobs with passthrough params, exit-code results, and enforced timeouts."
 readme = "README.md"
 license = { file = "LICENSE" }
diff --git a/src/vibeshed/__init__.py b/src/vibeshed/__init__.py
index d3ec452..3ced358 100644
--- a/src/vibeshed/__init__.py
+++ b/src/vibeshed/__init__.py
@@ -1 +1 @@
-__version__ = "0.2.0"
+__version__ = "0.2.1"
diff --git a/src/vibeshed/templates_loader.py b/src/vibeshed/templates_loader.py
index f710851..9c4f3a1 100644
--- a/src/vibeshed/templates_loader.py
+++ b/src/vibeshed/templates_loader.py
@@ -66,8 +66,14 @@ def _resolve(rel_path: str) -> Any:
     return node
 
 
+_IGNORED_DIRS = frozenset({"__pycache__"})
+_IGNORED_SUFFIXES = (".pyc", ".pyo")
+
+
 def _walk_files(node: Any, prefix: str) -> Iterator[Tuple[str, str]]:
     for child in sorted(node.iterdir(), key=lambda c: c.name):
+        if child.name in _IGNORED_DIRS or child.name.endswith(_IGNORED_SUFFIXES):
+            continue
         rel = f"{prefix}{child.name}"
         if child.is_file():
             yield rel, child.read_text(encoding="utf-8")
diff --git a/tests/test_new_and_run.py b/tests/test_new_and_run.py
index d19a1a7..6d0ec0e 100644
--- a/tests/test_new_and_run.py
+++ b/tests/test_new_and_run.py
@@ -74,6 +74,21 @@ def test_run_unknown_slug(initialized_project: Path, runner: CliRunner) -> None:
     assert "not registered" in result.output.lower()
 
 
+def test_template_walker_skips_pycache(tmp_path: Path) -> None:
+    from vibeshed.templates_loader import _walk_files
+
+    (tmp_path / "main.py").write_text("print('hi')\n", encoding="utf-8")
+    pycache = tmp_path / "__pycache__"
+    pycache.mkdir()
+    # Realistic .pyc header is binary and would crash a UTF-8 read.
+    (pycache / "main.cpython-312.pyc").write_bytes(b"\xcb\x0d\x0d\x0a\x00\x00")
+    (tmp_path / "stale.pyc").write_bytes(b"\xcb\x0d\x0d\x0a")
+    (tmp_path / "stale.pyo").write_bytes(b"\xcb\x0d\x0d\x0a")
+
+    rels = [rel for rel, _ in _walk_files(tmp_path, prefix="")]
+    assert rels == ["main.py"]
+
+
 def test_run_forwards_passthrough_args(
     initialized_project: Path, runner: CliRunner
 ) -> None: