Auto-inferred inputs are the most requested feature vx will not build. A traced read set describes what a task read once, on one machine, after it ran. A cache key has to be right before the task runs, everywhere.
A cache is only correct if the declared inputs are the complete set of files the task reads. Instead of inferring that set, vx lets a task run with the declared paths as the only ones it can touch, and fails the run on anything else.
You changed one file and expected one rebuild; you got twelve. Most tools say 'miss' and stop. vx keeps the per-component fingerprints behind every key, so vx why names the component that moved.
Every monorepo tool folds the lockfile into every key, so pnpm update invalidates the world. @vzn/vx-lockfile parses the lockfile and keys each task on its own project's dependency closure. In vx's own repo that turned 59 re-keyed tasks into 2.
A vx.config.ts is a module: it can import a preset, spread it, compute a command. That one choice removes Turborepo's globalDependencies and Nx's namedInputs from the schema, because a language that composes does not need a schema that does.
Configs are programs and programs can read the environment. vx lock evaluates every config now and writes the resolved objects to a lockfile; vx run --frozen uses them without evaluating; vx lock --check catches drift a byte hash cannot see.
A vx task is one shell command. Not a JavaScript function, not an executor with an options object, not a list of steps. The constraint is what makes remote execution, sandboxing, replay and migration all fall out for free.
vx ships as one self-contained executable per platform. No Node to pick, no Bun to install, no daemon to start. npm install -D @vzn/vx gets you the binary; a release tarball gets you the same binary without npm.
vx is built like Vite: a core pipeline with a named hook at every stage, and plugins that fill exactly the stage they need. A remote cache is one hook. A lockfile parser is one hook. Zero-migration Turbo support is one hook.
Every executor list ends with this machine. Every cache chain ends with .vx/cache. That is the one thing core does without being told, and it is what lets a plugin decline a task and hand it back instead of failing the run.
