ferret VS vim-rooter

I use ferret

This or users may have monorepo style projects and vim-rooter to auto-set cwd to specific directories within the project based on certain file markers (e.g. makefile, package.json, ...etc), to accomplish something like :e dir1/file.go | make would run make and then :e dir2/file2.ts | make would run npm.

maybe you are already doing this and you want to access files outside the project directory but if not I use vim-rooter to set the root dir of the project automatically when I open vim

The airblade/vim-rooter plugin is an essential part of my Neovim workflow. It automatically changes current directory (:h current-directory) for every buffer to a more natural one (like to path of its Git repository). For me this has the following benefits:

It depends where you open vim. If you are in home and open a file (even in sub directories) like nvim directory/file.txt, uour vim's current working directory (aka cwd) will be home. A way to make this automatic I think is the built in autocd (or something like that) and plugins like vim-rooter.

An alternative would be using a plugin like vim-rooter : https://github.com/airblade/vim-rooter

I just use rooter and avoid thinking about it...

There's vim-rooter, which is great.

No, it doesn't change current directory. For that, use sessions or airblade/vim-rooter (or wait around couple of months for planned 'mini.root' :) ). And, of course, you can create custom items which will change current directory.