Workspace-root tasks (2026-09-28, stream D)

Status: shipped as D-39 (docs/history/ws-d.md).

The two runners vx adopts both have tasks that live at the workspace root: Turbo’s root tasks (//#lint in turbo.json, run from the root package.json scripts) and Nx’s root project (a project.json or package.json at . with its own targets). vx had no way to hold one, so both adoption paths dropped them, and an edge from a package task to one refused (stream N, docs/history/ws-n.md).

Core already runs a root project: a workspace whose package globs list . (this repo does) makes the root package a project with the same rules as any other. What was missing is a way to declare one without changing the package manager’s own member list, which changes what the manager does: npm 10 given . in workspaces links the root into its own node_modules and runs the root’s script under npm run x --workspaces (probed).

Declaration

A vx.config.* in the workspace root makes the root package a project when no package glob already reaches it. That file was ignored before: a root#build edge refused with “no such project”, and vx run build at the root said “not inside a project”. The file is the opt-in (principle 2, explicit over magical): a root with no config is not a project, as before. The project’s name is the root package.json name; a root with a config and no name is skipped with the warning a member gets.

Inputs and boundaries

Unchanged, and the reason this needs no new rule (principle 6). The root project’s directory is the whole workspace, so every member is a nested project: nested-dirs.ts drops a member’s paths from the root’s globs, and the sandbox grants the root task none of them. A root task owns only the files no member owns. A root task whose command reads members’ sources (a root tsc -b) cannot cache on its own globs: it declares those files through cache.inputs.workspaceFiles, the documented boundary exception, or runs uncached. A mapper that emits one says which. The mapper also owns the name: Turbo writes the root as // (//#lint), and vx names it by the root package.json name.

--affected

Unchanged. Containment gives a changed file to its deepest owner, so a file under a member selects the member and a file owned by no member (a root script, tsconfig.base.json) selects the root. A root task that declared workspaceFiles is selected by that channel for the member files it names. Dependents follow the graph as for any project.

Key

Unchanged: the root project’s key folds its config, its own package.json bytes, the workspace fingerprint and its upstream keys, like any project.

Cost

One config lookup at the root per discovery, run beside the member scans; nothing when a glob already lists ..