Dotfiles, and files inside dotdirs are not added by "git annex add" unless
the dotfile or directory is explicitly listed. So "git annex add ." will
add all untracked files in the current directory except for those in
dotdirs.
One reason for this is that it will make git-annex more usable with vcsh,
where you don't want "vcsh big annex add" to check in all the dotfiles
that are already versioned in other repositories.
(If you're using vcsh for repos that contain non-dotfiles, this won't help,
and you'll need to .gitignore such things, but this will cover the common
case.)
A more general reason why this seems like a good idea is the same reason ls
ignores dotfiles, just the unix convention that they are cruft that is kept
out of the way most of the time.
All the other git-annex commands still do deal with any dotfiles that do
get into the annex. This seemed right because if I've gone to the trouble
to add a dotfile, I will want "git annex get ." to get it along with
everything else.