Engineering Advanced MonorepoTurborepoNx

Monorepo Navigator

Turborepo/Nx/pnpm workspace management and impact analysis.

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Real Conversations

See how the Monorepo Navigator skill responds to actual requests. These are representative examples of what your AI agent will produce.

You

Our Turborepo monorepo CI takes 22 minutes on every PR, even if I only changed one package. We have 6 apps and 12 packages. The GitHub Actions workflow runs turbo run build test lint with no filtering. How do I fix this?

Agent

You're rebuilding all 18 packages on every PR because you're not using Turborepo's affected detection. Here's the fix:

Problem: turbo run build test lint — no filter, rebuilds everything

Fix: filter to affected packages only

# .github/workflows/ci.yml
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
  with:
    fetch-depth: 0   # CRITICAL — without this, affected detection breaks

- name: Build affected
  run: turbo run build --filter=...[origin/main]

- name: Test affected  
  run: turbo run test --filter=...[origin/main]

- name: Lint affected
  run: turbo run lint --filter=...[origin/main]

...[origin/main] means: changed packages + everything that depends on them.

Add remote caching to make even full builds fast:

turbo login   # authenticates to Vercel Remote Cache
turbo link    # links this repo to a remote cache

Then in CI:

env:
  TURBO_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.TURBO_TOKEN }}
  TURBO_TEAM: ${{ vars.TURBO_TEAM }}

Expected result:

PR touching 1 package: builds 1-3 packages (package + direct dependents)
Cold build of everything: ~22min (unchanged)
Warm build with remote cache hit: ~90 seconds for most PRs

Dry-run to see impact before merging:

turbo run build --filter=...[origin/main] --dry-run
# Shows: "Would run 3 tasks" vs current "18 tasks"

You

I'm refactoring @company/ui — removing the Button component's variant prop and replacing it with intent. The variant prop is used in 3 apps and 2 other packages. I need to know the blast radius before I merge.

Agent

Here's how to map the full blast radius before you merge.

Step 1 — Find all consumers of the variant prop:

# Find every file using the variant prop on Button
grep -r 'variant=' apps/ packages/ --include='*.tsx' --include='*.ts' -l
# Output:
# apps/web/src/components/Header.tsx
# apps/web/src/pages/checkout.tsx
# apps/admin/src/views/UserTable.tsx
# packages/forms/src/FormButton.tsx
# packages/dashboard/src/ActionBar.tsx
# (plus test files)

Step 2 — Check Turborepo affected to confirm downstream impact:

# Simulate: if I change @company/ui, what breaks?
turbo run build --filter=...@company/ui... --dry-run
# Expected output: @company/web, @company/admin, @company/forms, @company/dashboard
# — all 4 dependent packages would need to rebuild

Step 3 — Migration strategy (avoid big-bang change):

Instead of removing variant in one PR:

PR 1: Add intent prop alongside variant, mark variant deprecated in JSDoc
PRs 2-4: Update each app/package one at a time
PR 5: Remove variant after all callers are migrated

Blast Radius Summary:

CRITICAL: @company/ui (you're changing the API)
HIGH: apps/web, apps/admin (direct consumers with TypeScript errors on rename)
MEDIUM: packages/forms, packages/dashboard (transitive, will fail type-check)
LOW: apps/mobile — doesn't import Button directly

Set up a changeset before merging PR 5 — this is a MINOR bump (not MAJOR) since you're adding intent before removing variant.

You

We have three separate GitHub repos: frontend (Next.js), api (Express), and shared-types (TypeScript types). We want to move them into one monorepo using pnpm workspaces + Turborepo. We need to keep full git history for all three repos.

Agent

Here's the migration preserving full git history from all three repos.

Step 1 — Scaffold the monorepo:

mkdir myorg-monorepo && cd myorg-monorepo
pnpm init
cat > pnpm-workspace.yaml << 'EOF'
packages:
  - 'apps/*'
  - 'packages/*'
EOF

Step 2 — Import each repo with history intact:

# For each repo, rewrite history into a subdirectory
git clone https://github.com/myorg/frontend
cd frontend
git filter-repo --to-subdirectory-filter apps/web
cd ..

git clone https://github.com/myorg/api
cd api
git filter-repo --to-subdirectory-filter apps/api
cd ..

git clone https://github.com/myorg/shared-types
cd shared-types
git filter-repo --to-subdirectory-filter packages/types
cd ..

# Merge all three into the new repo
git init
git remote add frontend ./frontend && git fetch frontend --tags
git merge frontend/main --allow-unrelated-histories
git remote add api ./api && git fetch api --tags
git merge api/main --allow-unrelated-histories
git remote add shared-types ./shared-types && git fetch shared-types --tags
git merge shared-types/main --allow-unrelated-histories

Step 3 — Update package names and cross-references:

// apps/web/package.json
{ "name": "@myorg/web", "dependencies": { "@myorg/types": "workspace:*" } }
// apps/api/package.json  
{ "name": "@myorg/api", "dependencies": { "@myorg/types": "workspace:*" } }
// packages/types/package.json
{ "name": "@myorg/types" }

Step 4 — Add Turborepo:

pnpm add -D turbo -w
# Create turbo.json with build pipeline

git log apps/web/src/pages/index.tsx will show the full frontend history.

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Monorepo Navigator

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