diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 932eefe..459f03c 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
-data/large_data/
+# Project-specific dataset exclusions
+data/large_data/*
+!data/large_data/.gitkeep
 
 # Byte-compiled / optimized / DLL files
 __pycache__/
diff --git a/data/large_data/.gitkeep b/data/large_data/.gitkeep
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e69de29