Monorepo workspace orientation

Read-only. Answers "what is this repository, structurally" before anything edits it: the package manager, the workspace list, the task runner, and the tasks the runner actually defines.

Every answer is a pointer plus a digest — the file that states the fact and a short quotation of it — never a flattened claim. This is the Class-A shape standards-from-config uses, and for the same reason: a digest the reader can check beats a summary they have to trust.

When to use

• Before editing anything in a repository with apps/, packages/, libs/, a pnpm-workspace.yaml, a turbo.json, or an nx.json.
• "Which packages depend on @org/ui?", "what does build run here?", "which workspace owns this file?"
• Before a cross-workspace change, as the input to blast-radius-analyzer § Monorepo.

Not for authoring a component or picking a UI idiom — the stack detector already reports the frontend workspace as state.stack.scope_root, and the UI lane routes on that.

Procedure

1. Package manager — from the declaration, then the lockfile

packageManager in the root package.json is the declaration and wins when present (it is what Corepack enforces). Otherwise infer from the lockfile: pnpm-lock.yaml → pnpm, yarn.lock → yarn, bun.lock / bun.lockb → bun, package-lock.json → npm. Two lockfiles is a finding, not a tie to break — report both and stop.

2. Workspaces — from the declarative source

In precedence order, and report which one answered:

Source	Field
pnpm-workspace.yaml	packages:
package.json	workspaces (array, or { packages: [...] })
nx.json beside per-project project.json	Nx infers; use step 3
lerna.json	packages

Globs are globs: packages/* means every direct child carrying a manifest, not every directory.

2b. Catalogs — the version is declared once, not per member

When the workspace defines a catalog, a member's catalog: range is a REFERENCE, not a declaration. Report the catalog as the version's home:

• A member range starting catalog: (bare, or catalog:<name>) resolves against the workspace catalog definition. It does not resolve outside the workspace at all — treat it exactly as workspace: for publishability.
• An upgrade edits the catalog, not the member. Editing a member that reads catalog: is either a no-op or a silent divergence from the catalog, and the catalog exists precisely so the version has one home.
• A member carrying a version LITERAL for a dependency the catalog also declares is reported, not gated — see § Do NOT. Name the member, the dependency, the literal range, the catalog name and the catalog range. Where several catalogs declare the same dependency, list every candidate rather than inventing an applicable one; nothing in the workspace definition says which the literal intended to follow.

3. Task runner — ask the runner, do not read its config

When a runner is present, its own listing is the source of truth, because a runner infers projects that appear in no config file you can read:

# Nx — never read project.json by hand for the project list
npx nx show projects
npx nx show project <name>   # targets for one project

# Turborepo
npx turbo ls

Print the task list with each task's description field when it has one — turbo.json tasks carry an optional description, and it is the only place the repository says what a task is for rather than what it depends on.

4. No runner on PATH — walk the manifests and say so

turbo and nx are the consumer project's binaries, invoked through its own npx / pnpm dlx. This package never installs them. When neither resolves, build the graph from the manifests instead: for each workspace, read its dependencies / devDependencies and keep the entries whose names match another workspace's name. That is the dependency graph, and it is complete for workspace:-linked packages.

State plainly that the listing came from manifests rather than the runner — an inferred target list can miss runner-inferred targets. This is the posture react-shadcn-ui already takes for the shadcn CLI; the stop condition is missing-tool-handling (never install it silently, never fake the output).

Output format

An orientation report MUST contain, in order:

1. The package manager, with the source that decided it — packageManager when declared, otherwise the lockfile filename. Two lockfiles is reported as a finding, never resolved by picking one.
2. The workspace table — one row per workspace: directory path, package name, and its workspace-internal dependencies. Both the path and the name, because the graph links on name and humans talk in paths.
3. The task runner and its tasks, each task with its description field when the config carries one, and its dependsOn when it has one.
4. A source line naming which of the two paths produced the listing — the runner's own (turbo ls / nx show projects) or the manifest walk. When it was the manifest walk, the line also says that runner-inferred targets may be missing.

Package manager: pnpm@9.12.0   [package.json#packageManager]
Workspaces (2)                 [pnpm-workspace.yaml#packages: apps/*, packages/*]
  apps/web        @fixture/web   deps: @fixture/ui
  packages/ui     @fixture/ui    deps: —
Task runner: turbo             [turbo.json#tasks]
  build   "Compile every workspace to its dist/ output."   dependsOn: ^build
  lint    "Run the workspace linter over its own sources."
  test    "Run the workspace unit tests."                  dependsOn: ^build
Source: turbo ls  (runner listing)

When the runner was absent, the last line reads Source: manifest walk (turbo not on PATH — runner-inferred targets may be missing).

Gotcha

• A workspace's directory name and its package name are different keys. The graph links on name; humans talk in paths. Print both.
• packages/eslint-config is a workspace. It is not a frontend, and it is not a scope candidate for a UI change.
• An nx.json with no workspaces key in package.json is normal, not broken.
• packageManager pinning a manager whose lockfile is absent means the install was never run with it. Report the mismatch.

Do NOT

• Do NOT gate on a member version literal. Whether a catalog repository permits selective literals is that repository's convention, not this suite's to impose. Report it as a structural observation — "member literal overlaps catalog entry", never "invalid" — and let the reader decide. An exact mismatch between the literal and the catalog range is reported at higher severity, and still does not gate.

• Read project.json by hand to enumerate Nx projects — nx show projects is the source of truth and includes inferred targets.

• Install turbo or nx to answer a question. They are the consumer's binaries; when absent, walk the manifests and say that is what you did.

• Flatten the answer into prose without the file that states it.

• Report a workspace list from the conventional directories when a declarative source exists — the declaration is authoritative, and the two can disagree.

See also

• standards-from-config — the Class-A pointer+digest shape this follows.
• workspace-link — when a cross-workspace import will not resolve.
• blast-radius-analyzer — § Monorepo consumes this graph.
• monorepo-antipatterns — diff-detectable task-graph mistakes.