nx-workspace

Explore and understand Nx workspaces. USE WHEN answering questions about the workspace, projects, or tasks. ALSO USE WHEN an nx command fails or you need to check available targets/configuration before running a task. EXAMPLES: 'What projects are in this workspace?', 'How is project X configured?', 'What depends on library Y?', 'What targets can I run?', 'Cannot find configuration for task', 'debug nx task failure'.

Quality

83%

Does it follow best practices?

Impact

—

No eval scenarios have been run

Securityby

Passed

No known issues

Nx Workspace Exploration

This skill provides read-only exploration of Nx workspaces. Use it to understand workspace structure, project configuration, available targets, and dependencies.

Listing Projects

Use pnpm exec nx show projects to list projects in the workspace.

The project filtering syntax (-p/--projects) works across many Nx commands including pnpm exec nx run-many, pnpm exec nx release, pnpm exec nx show projects, and more. Filters support explicit names, glob patterns, tag references (e.g. tag:name), directories, and negation (e.g. !project-name).

# List all projects
pnpm exec nx show projects

# Filter by pattern (glob)
pnpm exec nx show projects --projects "apps/*"
pnpm exec nx show projects --projects "shared-*"

# Filter by tag
pnpm exec nx show projects --projects "tag:publishable"
pnpm exec nx show projects -p 'tag:publishable,!tag:internal'

# Filter by target (projects that have a specific target)
pnpm exec nx show projects --withTarget build

# Combine filters
pnpm exec nx show projects --type lib --withTarget test
pnpm exec nx show projects --affected --exclude="*-e2e"
pnpm exec nx show projects -p "tag:scope:client,packages/*"

# Negate patterns
pnpm exec nx show projects -p '!tag:private'
pnpm exec nx show projects -p '!*-e2e'

# Output as JSON
pnpm exec nx show projects --json

Project Configuration

Use pnpm exec nx show project <name> --json to get the full resolved configuration for a project.

Important: Do NOT read project.json directly - it only contains partial configuration. The pnpm exec nx show project --json command returns the full resolved config including inferred targets from plugins.

You can read the full project schema at node_modules/nx/schemas/project-schema.json to understand nx project configuration options.

# Get full project configuration
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json

# Extract specific parts from the JSON
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq '.targets'
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq '.targets.build'
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq '.targets | keys'


# Check project metadata
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq '{name, root, sourceRoot, projectType, tags}'

Target Information

Targets define what tasks can be run on a project.

# List all targets for a project
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq '.targets | keys'

# Get full target configuration
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq '.targets.build'

# Check target executor/command
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq '.targets.build.executor'
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq '.targets.build.command'

# View target options
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq '.targets.build.options'

# Check target inputs/outputs (for caching)
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq '.targets.build.inputs'
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq '.targets.build.outputs'

# Find projects with a specific target
pnpm exec nx show projects --withTarget serve
pnpm exec nx show projects --withTarget e2e

Workspace Configuration

Read nx.json directly for workspace-level configuration. You can read the full project schema at node_modules/nx/schemas/nx-schema.json to understand nx project configuration options.

# Read the full nx.json
cat nx.json

# Or use jq for specific sections
cat nx.json | jq '.targetDefaults'
cat nx.json | jq '.namedInputs'
cat nx.json | jq '.plugins'
cat nx.json | jq '.generators'

Key nx.json sections:

targetDefaults - Default configuration applied to all targets of a given name
namedInputs - Reusable input definitions for caching
plugins - Nx plugins and their configuration
...and much more, read the schema or nx.json for details

Affected Projects

If the user is asking about affected projects, read the affected projects reference for detailed commands and examples.

Common Exploration Patterns

"What's in this workspace?"

pnpm exec nx show projects
pnpm exec nx show projects --type app
pnpm exec nx show projects --type lib

"How do I build/test/lint project X?"

pnpm exec nx show project X --json | jq '.targets | keys'
pnpm exec nx show project X --json | jq '.targets.build'

"What depends on library Y?"

# Use the project graph to find dependents
pnpm exec nx graph --print | jq '.graph.dependencies | to_entries[] | select(.value[].target == "Y") | .key'

Programmatic Answers

When processing nx CLI results, use command-line tools to compute the answer programmatically rather than counting or parsing output manually. Always use --json flags to get structured output that can be processed with jq, grep, or other tools you have installed locally.

Listing Projects

pnpm exec nx show projects --json

Example output:

["my-app", "my-app-e2e", "shared-ui", "shared-utils", "api"]

Common operations:

# Count projects
pnpm exec nx show projects --json | jq 'length'

# Filter by pattern
pnpm exec nx show projects --json | jq '.[] | select(startswith("shared-"))'

# Get affected projects as array
pnpm exec nx show projects --affected --json | jq '.'

Project Details

pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json

Example output:

{
  "root": "apps/my-app",
  "name": "my-app",
  "sourceRoot": "apps/my-app/src",
  "projectType": "application",
  "tags": ["type:app", "scope:client"],
  "targets": {
    "build": {
      "executor": "@nx/vite:build",
      "options": { "outputPath": "dist/apps/my-app" }
    },
    "serve": {
      "executor": "@nx/vite:dev-server",
      "options": { "buildTarget": "my-app:build" }
    },
    "test": {
      "executor": "@nx/vite:test",
      "options": {}
    }
  },
  "implicitDependencies": []
}

Common operations:

# Get target names
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq '.targets | keys'

# Get specific target config
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq '.targets.build'

# Get tags
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq '.tags'

# Get project root
pnpm exec nx show project my-app --json | jq -r '.root'

Project Graph

pnpm exec nx graph --print

Example output:

{
  "graph": {
    "nodes": {
      "my-app": {
        "name": "my-app",
        "type": "app",
        "data": { "root": "apps/my-app", "tags": ["type:app"] }
      },
      "shared-ui": {
        "name": "shared-ui",
        "type": "lib",
        "data": { "root": "libs/shared-ui", "tags": ["type:ui"] }
      }
    },
    "dependencies": {
      "my-app": [
        { "source": "my-app", "target": "shared-ui", "type": "static" }
      ],
      "shared-ui": []
    }
  }
}

Common operations:

# Get all project names from graph
pnpm exec nx graph --print | jq '.graph.nodes | keys'

# Find dependencies of a project
pnpm exec nx graph --print | jq '.graph.dependencies["my-app"]'

# Find projects that depend on a library
pnpm exec nx graph --print | jq '.graph.dependencies | to_entries[] | select(.value[].target == "shared-ui") | .key'

Troubleshooting

"Cannot find configuration for task X:target"

# Check what targets exist on the project
pnpm exec nx show project X --json | jq '.targets | keys'

# Check if any projects have that target
pnpm exec nx show projects --withTarget target

"The workspace is out of sync"

pnpm exec nx sync
pnpm exec nx reset  # if sync doesn't fix stale cache

Repository: Ensono/stacks-nx-plugins
Commit: e887790

Last updated: about 20 hours ago
Created: about 20 hours ago

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