Ben Hyde wrote:

Would changing (:tree <path>) so it accepts an optional argument be less
adhoc?

Possibly (:tree <path> &key (depth nil)
(don-not-recure-after-asdf-encountered nil))

That said this would have little if any value in my use case.  I point
ask it to sweep over my
the directory where all my coding lives, and most of the directories in
there are not lisp, and so
there ain’t any asd files in those.

I think the problem with this is that, as Fare points out, it's the
author of the system who has laid out the directory tree