Set Up Monorepo Build Orchestration with Nx Using Claude

Nx turns a messy monorepo into a fast, cacheable build pipeline — but the initial setup is fiddly. Let Claude handle the configuration.

I have a monorepo with these packages:
- packages/api (Express + TypeScript)
- packages/web (Next.js)
- packages/shared (shared types and utils)
- packages/ui (component library)

Set up Nx with:
1. Project-level nx.json and workspace configuration
2. Proper dependency graph between packages
3. Build, test, and lint targets for each package
4. Affected commands so CI only builds what changed
5. Remote caching configuration with Nx Cloud

Claude will generate the project.json files for each package with correct dependency relationships:

{
  "name": "web",
  "targets": {
    "build": {
      "dependsOn": ["^build"],
      "executor": "@nx/next:build"
    },
    "dev": {
      "dependsOn": ["shared:build", "ui:build"],
      "executor": "@nx/next:server"
    }
  }
}

The real power is in the affected commands. Once Nx knows your dependency graph, CI only rebuilds what a PR actually touched:

npx nx affected --target=test --base=main
npx nx affected --target=build --base=main

Ask Claude to add task pipelines so nx run-many --target=build builds packages in the right order, respecting dependencies.

Nx makes monorepos fast — Claude makes Nx setup painless.