diff --git a/tsconfig.json b/tsconfig.json
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..7704e13bc0fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tsconfig.json
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+// Yes this file is intentionally empty!
+// ---
+// Having a blank `tsconfig.json` file prevents TypeScript from crawling up your directory tree
+// and possibly picking up a parent `tsconfig.json` (which, unsurprisingly, is very hard to debug)
+{}