Nx is a build system for monorepos. It helps you develop faster and keep CI fast as your codebase scales.
Challenges of Monorepos
Section titled “Challenges of Monorepos”Monorepos have many advantages and are especially powerful for AI-assisted development. But as teams and codebases grow, monorepos are hard to scale:
- Slow builds and tests - Hundreds or thousands of tasks compete for CI resources.
- Complex task pipelines - Projects depend on each other, so tasks need to run in the right order — and that's hard to manage by hand.
- Flaky CI - Longer pipelines lead to random failures and inconsistent results between local and CI environments.
- Architectural erosion - Without clear boundaries, unwanted dependencies creep in and projects become tightly coupled.
What Nx Does
Section titled “What Nx Does”Nx reduces friction across your entire development cycle with intelligent caching, task orchestration, and deep understanding of your codebase structure.
At its core, Nx:
- Runs tasks fast - Caches results so you never rebuild the same code twice.
- Understands your codebase - Builds project and task graphs showing how everything connects.
- Orchestrates intelligently - Runs tasks in the right order, parallelizing when possible.
- Enforces boundaries - Module boundary rules prevent unwanted dependencies between projects.
- Handles flakiness - Automatically re-runs flaky tasks and self-heals CI failures.
nx build myapp # Run a tasknx build myapp # Run again - instant cache hitnx run-many -t build test # Run across all projectsAt the very core, Nx is a super fast, intelligent task runner. Let's take the example of an NPM workspace. This could be a project's package.json:
{ "name": "my-project", "scripts": { "build": "tsc", "test": "jest" }}Then you can simply add Nx to your root package.json:
{ "devDependencies": { "nx": "latest" }}And once that's done, you can run your tasks via Nx.
nx build my-projectThis will execute the build script from my-project's package.json, equivalent to running npm run build in that project directory.
Similarly you can run tasks across all projects, just specific ones or just those from projects you touched.
From there, you can gradually enhance your setup by adding features like task caching, adding plugins, optimizing your CI via task distribution, and many more powerful capabilities as your needs grow.
Start Small, Grow as Needed
Section titled “Start Small, Grow as Needed”Nx is modular. Start with just the CLI and add capabilities as your needs grow.
| Component | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Nx Core | Task runner with local caching. Works with any tech stack. |
| Nx Plugins | Technology-specific automation (generators, executors, dependency detection). |
| Nx Console | Editor extension for VSCode/JetBrains with visual UI and AI assistance. |
| Nx Cloud | Remote caching, affected commands, and self-healing CI. |
Yes, Nx provides value even for single-project repositories. You get fast task caching, intelligent task orchestration, and access to Nx plugins for your specific technology stack. As your project grows into a monorepo, the foundation is already in place.
Nx can also connect multiple repositories into a synthetic monorepo, letting you orchestrate large changes across all connected repos.
Where to Go from Here
Section titled “Where to Go from Here”Starting fresh? → Create a new workspace
Have an existing project? → Add Nx to your project
Want hands-on learning? → Follow a tutorial
Prefer video? → Learn with our video courses
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