One Repo, Everything

Mobile app. Backend API. Database schema. Deployment scripts. AI agent configurations. All in one repo.

I tried multi-repo first. Separate repos for frontend, backend, and infra. Within a week, I was spending more time syncing types and managing deployments than building features.

Switched to monorepo. Never went back.

Structure

/
├── apps/
│   ├── mobile/          # React Native + Expo
│   └── backend/         # NestJS 11
├── packages/
│   ├── shared/          # Types, utils, constants
│   ├── supabase/        # Schema, migrations, types
│   └── ui/              # Shared UI components
├── scripts/             # Build, deploy, submit
└── .claude/             # AI agent configurations

Why Monorepo

Shared Types

Change a database column → TypeScript errors in both frontend and backend immediately. No more "the API changed but nobody told the mobile team."

One Deploy Command

pnpm deploy:all builds the backend Docker image, pushes to Oracle Cloud, builds the mobile app via EAS, and submits to both stores.

AI Agents See Everything

The 11 AI agents have context on the entire codebase. When you ask the Architect to add a feature, it designs the database schema, the API endpoint, and the mobile screen — all in one plan. That's impossible with multi-repo.

Zero Context Switching

One terminal. One editor. One git history. When I was shipping 4 apps in a month, this saved at least 2 hours per day in context switching alone.

What I Learned

1. Turborepo is worth the setup. Caching build outputs across packages saves 40-60% of build time after the first run.

2. Shared types are the killer feature. Not reusable components. Not shared utils. The types. Everything else is nice-to-have.

3. The monorepo makes onboarding faster. New developer or AI agent — same thing. One clone, one install, everything works.

Related

• React Native + NestJS + Supabase Starter — the specific technologies
• Backend Boilerplate Fatigue — what this solves
• Claude Code AI Agents — how agents use the monorepo