Build a Monorepo Management CLI with Node.js

Build a Monorepo Management CLI with Node.js Monorepos are everywhere — Vercel, Google, Meta, and most modern open source projects use them. But managing a monorepo means juggling workspaces, dependency versions, build orders, and change detection across dozens of packages. Tools like Turborepo and Nx handle this, but understanding how they work under the hood makes you a better developer. In this article, we'll build a lightweight monorepo management CLI that handles the core operations: workspace discovery, dependency graph resolution, change detection, and ordered task execution. Along the way, you'll learn the algorithms and data structures that power production monorepo tools. What We're Building monoman — a CLI that: Discovers all workspaces in a monorepo (npm/yarn/pnpm workspaces) Builds a dependency graph between packages Detects which packages changed since a git ref Runs tasks (build, test, lint) in correct dependency order Supports parallel execution with dependency-aware sc