Monorepo Workspace

Focus on what matters. Hide the noise.

Monorepo Workspace lets you define named profiles — curated sets of folders from your apps/ and libs/ directories — and switch between them instantly. Everything else stays hidden in the file explorer until you need it.

How it works

The extension writes to VS Code's built-in files.exclude setting when you switch profiles. No custom tree views, no workarounds — the native explorer just shows what's relevant to your current context.

Root-level files and folders (tooling, config, CI, etc.) are always visible regardless of the active profile.

Getting started

1. Open your monorepo in VS Code or Cursor
2. Run Monorepo: Create Profile from the command palette
3. Give it a name (e.g. frontend) and select the folders to include
4. The status bar shows your active profile — click it to switch or peek

Features

Workspace profiles

Define as many profiles as you need, each with its own set of visible folders:

// .vscode/monorepo-workspaces.json
{
  "activeProfile": "frontend",
  "profiles": {
    "frontend": {
      "label": "Frontend",
      "folders": ["apps/web", "libs/ui", "libs/utils"]
    },
    "backend": {
      "label": "Backend",
      "folders": ["apps/api", "libs/db", "libs/shared"]
    }
  }
}

Commit this file to share profiles with your team.

Status bar button

The status bar shows your active profile at a glance with color coding:

• Accent color — profile active, unimportant folders hidden
• Orange — peek mode, all folders temporarily visible
• Default — no profile, all folders shown

Click the button to open the action menu:

Workspace: frontend
> $(eye-closed) Peek          Temporarily show all folders
  $(arrow-swap) Switch Profile
  $(folder-opened) Show All Folders

Peek mode

Need to quickly look at a folder outside your profile? Hit Peek from the status bar menu. All hidden folders reappear temporarily. Click Restore to go back to your profile.

Context menu

Right-click any folder in the explorer to add or remove it from a profile directly.

Always-visible root folders

Anything at the root that isn't a package directory (apps/, libs/) is always shown — tools/, infra/, .github/, config files, etc.

Configuration

monorepoWorkspace.packageDirs

Directories whose subdirectories are treated as selectable packages.

// .vscode/settings.json
{
  "monorepoWorkspace.packageDirs": ["apps", "libs"]
}

Change this if your monorepo uses different directory names (packages/, services/, etc.). Open Monorepo: Open Settings from the command palette to edit it in the UI.

Commands

How profiles are stored

Profiles live in .vscode/monorepo-workspaces.json. The active files.exclude entries are written to .vscode/settings.json by VS Code when you switch profiles.

Recommended .gitignore practice: commit monorepo-workspaces.json (shared profiles) but leave settings.json out if your team uses different active profiles.