Nx Monorepo Setup in 2026: Skip the Confusion, Build the Right Architecture

Victor Daodu — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 12:02:38 +0000

When I first started exploring Nx monorepos, I thought the process would be simple:

Create the workspace
Generate an application
Start coding

So I ran:

npx create-nx-workspace@latest my-workspace

…and immediately hit my first moment of confusion.

Not because Nx did too much — but because I didn't yet understand what it had created, or why a monorepo is shaped the way it is.

This article walks through how to approach an Nx monorepo in 2026 without the early confusion most of us run into: what the create command really gives you, how libraries actually show up, and how to grow a clean architecture from there.

Versions used here: Nx 23, Angular 22. Commands are stable across recent Nx versions, but output details can shift slightly.

What is Nx?

Nx is a build system and monorepo framework that helps you manage multiple applications and shared libraries in a single repository.

Instead of maintaining separate repos:

frontend-repo
backend-repo
shared-ui-repo
shared-types-repo

you keep everything together, with clear boundaries:

platform/
├── apps/
│   ├── web
│   ├── admin
│   └── api
└── libs/
    ├── ui
    ├── shared
    ├── models
    └── data-access

One repo, shared tooling, and enforced boundaries between projects.

Creating an Nx Workspace

Start with:

npx create-nx-workspace@latest workspace-name

Nx asks you a few questions. The two that matter most for beginners:

1. Which stack / preset?

Preset	Good for
Angular / React / Vue / etc.	Learning Nx or starting a real app — you get framework config for free
Node / Express / Nest	Backend-only or API-first projects
TS / None (minimal)	Experienced users who want an empty, custom architecture
Package-based	Building and publishing reusable npm packages

If you're new, pick a framework preset. You'll get a working app and sensible defaults instead of a blank canvas.

2. Should I enable Nx Cloud?

You'll see something like:

Speed up GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and more with Nx Cloud?

For beginners, Skip for now is usually the right call. Nx Cloud is genuinely useful — remote caching, distributed task execution — but it solves problems you hit later:

slow CI pipelines
large teams
distributed builds

You can turn it on any time as the project grows.

The Part Nobody Explains: What You Actually Get

Here's the thing I wish someone had told me on day one.

A fresh create-nx-workspace with a framework preset generates one application and its e2e project. That's it.

For an Angular preset, you get something like:

Projects:

shop
shop-e2e

You do not automatically get feature-products, shared-ui, models, or a data-access layer. Those are libraries you create later — either by hand with generators, or by following one of the Nx tutorials that builds them out step by step.

This trips up a lot of people. You read a tutorial showing a rich structure like this:

Projects:

shop
shop-e2e
products
feature-products
feature-product-detail
shared-ui
models
data
api

…and you assume the create command produced all of it. It didn't. That's the end state of a tutorial, not the output of one command.

Rule of thumb: the create command gives you a starting app. Every library after that is a deliberate choice you make.

Once you internalize that, Nx stops feeling like a black box and starts feeling like a set of tools you're in control of.

First Thing To Do: Read the Graph

Before you generate — or delete — anything, look at your dependency graph:

npx nx graph

This opens an interactive view of how your projects connect:

shop-e2e
   │
   ▼
  shop
   │
   ├── feature-products
   │
   └── shared-ui

The graph is one of Nx's strongest features. It tells you:

what depends on what
what's safe to remove
how your apps and libraries actually wire together

You can also list projects as plain text:

npx nx show projects

Removing Projects the Right Way

If you scaffolded something you don't want (say, an example app), don't just delete the folder. Manually removing a directory leaves behind config, path mappings, and graph references.

Use the generator instead:

npx nx g @nx/workspace:remove project-name

For example:

npx nx g @nx/workspace:remove shop

Sometimes Nx pushes back:

shop is still a dependency of shop-e2e

That's not an error — it's Nx protecting your architecture. It's telling you:

shop-e2e  ──▶  shop

Remove the dependent project first, then work inward:

shop-e2e
   ↓
 shop
   ↓
feature libraries

Always remove from the outside in.

A Solid Nx Monorepo Structure

Once you're building your own thing, a common, scalable layout looks like this:

workspace/
├── apps/
│   ├── web
│   ├── admin
│   ├── mobile
│   └── api
└── libs/
    ├── features/
    ├── ui/
    ├── data-access/
    ├── models/
    └── utilities/

The layers, and what each one owns

Applications — things you deploy. They wire everything together: routing, configuration, app bootstrap.

apps/web
apps/admin
apps/api

Feature libraries — business functionality: pages, workflows, and rules.

feature-auth
feature-dashboard
feature-products

UI libraries — reusable, presentational components with no business logic.

ui-button
ui-card
ui-modal
ui-table

Data-access libraries — talk to APIs and manage state.

auth-data-access
products-data-access
api-client

Models libraries — shared types and interfaces.

export interface User {
  id: string;
  name: string;
}

This layering is what lets Nx enforce boundaries — for example, stopping a UI library from importing a feature, or a model from depending on data-access.

Three Mistakes I Made Early

1. Treating the monorepo like one big folder

A monorepo isn't big-folder-with-everything. Its value comes from boundaries, ownership, and dependency rules. Without those, you just have a large repo with extra config.

2. Creating too many libraries too soon

You do not need 100 libraries on day one. Create a library when there's a real reason:

code that's genuinely reused
a clear ownership boundary
a distinct business domain

Premature splitting adds friction with no payoff.

3. Ignoring the graph

The graph isn't decoration — it's the map of your system. If you're not looking at it, you're guessing.

A Workflow That Actually Works

Create the workspace — npx create-nx-workspace@latest
See what you have — npx nx show projects
Visualize it — npx nx graph
Remove anything you don't need — npx nx g @nx/workspace:remove <name>
Generate your own libraries deliberately — apps in apps/, libraries in libs/
Start building features

Final Thoughts

Nx isn't hard because of the commands. It's hard because a monorepo asks you to think about the shape of your system before you write much code.

Once applications, libraries, dependencies, and boundaries click, Nx becomes a genuinely powerful way to build and scale large applications.

The biggest lesson I took away:

Don't rush into writing code. First understand the shape of your system. A clean architecture today saves months of refactoring later.

If this helped, drop a ❤️ or a comment with how you structure your own Nx workspaces — I'd love to compare setups.

Fun facts about React.

Victor Daodu — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 13:00:54 +0000

React is a JavaScript library.
React is built by Facebook.
Released to the world in 2013.
React is Open source.
Famous React Apps #1 Facebook #2 Instagram #3 Netflix #4 New York Times #5 Yahoo! Mail #6 Khan Academy #7 WhatsApp #8 Vivaldi Browser.
React in itself has a very small API, and you basically need to understand 4 concepts to get started:
Components
JSX
State
Props

React 🤓

Victor Daodu — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 12:23:58 +0000

such an interesting framework.

What is Spring Boot

Victor Daodu — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 14:00:05 +0000

Many tech tutors have in their best explained what Spring Boot is. Having read their articles, I have come up with a clear view of what spring boot is all about. This article will benefit both newbies and intermediate developers who want to venture deep into this beautiful spring module.
Spring Boot is a project built on a spring framework that eliminates the boilerplate configurations required for setting up a Spring application.
Spring Boot is the combination of Spring Framework and Embedded Servers.
XML configuration is not required (deployment descriptor). Its ability to use convention over configuration software design patterns decreases the workload on the developer.
Developers can use Spring STS IDE or Spring Initializr to develop Spring Boot Java applications.

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