Hi,
I noticed that --exclude is far superior to --ignore in terms of startup performance. This is the startup command I used:

babel-watch --use-polling --watch /app --ignore node_modules --extensions .ts,.graphql src/main.ts

It all works once it starts up but it always takes about a minute to do so. I tried switching --ignore node_modules to --exclude /app/node_modules (which is the absolute path to my node_modules folder) and this improved it to about 10 seconds.

I looked into the source code and I think I know what is going on:

The watcher gets started on all files except what's inside --exclude (see this line). I think anything that matches --ignore should also be excluded. This way it wont start watchers on the whole node_modules folder if the user makes use of --ignore instead of --exclude.

If that is not possible it should be communicated clearly in the readme that --exclude is better in terms of startup performance and what is the difference between --exclude and --ignore (to be honest, I don't fully understand it).
Also, the node_modules folder should be the default for the --exclude option rather than the --ignore option.

Thank you for improving this in advance!
Moritz