identify-monorepo-root 🌱

Find the root directory of a monorepo from anywhere inside it.

The package works as a small CLI and as a library. It detects common monorepo root markers such as package-lock.json, yarn.lock, pnpm-lock.yaml, workspaces, and packageManager.

Installation

npm install identify-monorepo-root

You can also run it without a global install:

npx identify-monorepo-root

CLI usage

Run the command from any nested directory inside the repository:

identify-monorepo-root

The CLI prints the detected root path and exits with status code 1 when no root can be identified.

Library usage

import { identifyMonorepoRoot } from "identify-monorepo-root";

const monorepoRoot = identifyMonorepoRoot();

You may also pass a starting directory explicitly:

const monorepoRoot = identifyMonorepoRoot("/path/inside/repository");

Development

This repository uses npm, not Yarn or pnpm.

Useful commands:

npm test
npm run build
npm run verify

Commits are expected to use conventional commit messages. Local raw git commit is blocked by Husky on purpose; use the interactive helper instead:

npm run commit

That helper is intentionally a small local script instead of commitizen to avoid extra transitive maintenance and vulnerability surface.

Release workflow

Releases are automated with semantic-release in GitHub Actions.

• CI runs npm ci and npm run verify.
• Releases run on pushes to main or master, plus manual workflow dispatch.
• The workflow is designed for protected branches and does not rely on pushing version or changelog commits back to git.
• Git tags, npm releases, and GitHub Releases are the release source of truth.
• Because of that, the package.json version committed on main can lag behind the latest published version.
• The release workflow is set up for npm Trusted Publishing via GitHub Actions OIDC. No long-lived NPM_TOKEN should be required once the npm package is configured for trusted publishing.

You can preview the release process locally with:

npm run release:dry-run