Monorepo Navigator

Navigate, manage, and optimize monorepos at any scale. Covers Turborepo, Nx, pnpm workspaces, and Lerna/Changesets for cross-package impact analysis, selective builds on affected packages only, dependency graph visualization, remote caching configuration, migration from multi-repo to monorepo with preserved git history, and coordinated package publishing with automated changelogs.

Keywords: monorepo, Turborepo, Nx, pnpm workspaces, Changesets, dependency graph, remote cache, affected packages, selective builds, cross-package impact, npm publishing, workspace protocol

Core Capabilities

• Impact analysis — determine which apps break when a shared package changes, trace dependency chains, visualize Mermaid graphs, and calculate blast radius.
• Selective execution — run tests/builds only for affected packages, filter by changed files since a git ref, and skip unchanged packages in CI.
• Build optimization — remote caching (Turborepo/Vercel, Nx Cloud), incremental builds with input/output config, dependency-aware parallel scheduling, and artifact sharing.
• Publishing — Changesets for coordinated versioning, automated per-package changelogs, pre-release channels, and workspace:* replacement during publish.

When to Use

• Multiple packages/apps share code (UI components, utils, types, API clients)
• Build times are slow because everything rebuilds on every change
• Migrating from multiple repos to a single monorepo
• Publishing npm packages with coordinated versioning
• Teams work across packages and need unified tooling

Clarify First

Before analyzing or configuring, confirm these inputs. If any is unknown or vague, ASK — do not assume:

• Tooling — Turborepo, Nx, pnpm workspaces, or Changesets (drives the config and commands generated)
• Task — impact/dependency analysis, build optimization, or publishing setup (selects dependency_graph.py vs impact_detector.py vs package_analyzer.py)
• Repo root & git ref — the monorepo path and the baseline ref for "affected" detection (sets --ref and what counts as changed)

Stop rule: ask only the 2-3 that most change the output. If the user says "just draft it," proceed and list your assumptions at the top of the artifact.

Tools

References

Load the reference that matches the task — keep this file lean and pull detail on demand:

• references/tooling-and-configuration.md — tool selection decision matrix, recommended repo structure, full turbo.json and pnpm-workspace config, key Turborepo/pnpm commands, impact-analysis commands, remote-caching setup, affected-only CI workflow, Changesets publishing, and multi-repo→monorepo migration steps. Read when configuring or operating a monorepo.
• references/operations-and-best-practices.md — common pitfalls, best practices, troubleshooting table, and success criteria. Read when something misbehaves or when validating a setup.

Scope & Limitations

This skill covers:

• Turborepo, Nx, and pnpm workspace configuration and optimization
• Cross-package dependency analysis and impact visualization
• Remote caching setup (Vercel, Nx Cloud, self-hosted)
• Changesets-based coordinated versioning and npm publishing

This skill does NOT cover:

• Application-level build configuration (webpack, Vite, esbuild internals) — see performance-profiler
• CI/CD pipeline design beyond monorepo-specific filters — see ci-cd-pipeline-builder
• Git branching strategies and release flow — see release-manager
• Dependency vulnerability scanning and license auditing — see dependency-auditor

Integration Points