Houses of Thought
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Decisions

Should our team migrate to a monorepo?

A good move once remote build caching and affected-only CI are in place.

Layer 1 / 7Concepts & question

Frame the question

Set the purpose, the question worth reasoning about, and the concepts the whole house rests on.

Purpose
Decide whether the team should consolidate its repositories into a monorepo, so the choice weighs code sharing, build tooling, and ownership.
Overarching question
Should our team migrate to a monorepo?
Key concepts
Code sharingBuild toolingRelease couplingOwnership boundaries
Layer 2 / 7Stakeholders

Build the perspectives

Reason from each stakeholder in turn. Assign perspectives to co-builders so the work divides cleanly.

3 perspectives
Platform teamYOYou68

Wants unified tooling and atomic cross-cuts.

Product teamsMRMaya R.58

Fear slower CI and blurred ownership.

New hiresDKDevan K.62

Onboard faster with one checkout and one setup.

Layer 3 / 7Sourced facts

Ground it in evidence

Add facts with citations. Research Mode finds sources for you, and every claim links back to something checkable.

3 sourced facts
YO
Google runs billions of lines of code from a single repository with custom tooling.
MR
Teams migrating without incremental build tooling commonly report significant CI-time regressions.
Illustrative demo evidence, not a citation
Atomic cross-project changes drop from days to a single pull request in monorepo setups.
Vendor case studies, illustrativevia Research Mode
Layer 4 / 7Foundations

Surface the assumptions

Name what has to be true for the reasoning to hold. Weak footings show up here first.

3 foundational assumptions
01We can invest in remote caching and affected-only CI.YO
02Ownership can be enforced with CODEOWNERS instead of repo boundaries.MR
03Release trains can be decoupled inside one repository.YO
Layer 5 / 7Where it lands

Draw the conclusion

State the central conclusion and the reasoning that carries the perspectives into it.

Central conclusion
Adopt the monorepo after remote build caching and affected-only CI are in place.
The code-sharing and onboarding gains are real, and the main risk of slower CI is a tooling problem rather than a structural one.
Reasoning summary
Large engineering orgs run single repositories at scale, so the model itself is proven. The cost shows up as CI time and looser ownership, both of which caching and CODEOWNERS address. Sequencing the tooling ahead of the migration is what keeps the move low risk.
Layer 6 / 7Consequences

Trace the implications

Map what follows if the conclusion holds, sorted by how positive, negative, or uncertain each consequence is.

4 implications mappedSorted by register and tagged with time horizon and who it lands on.
Positive · 2
Atomic refactors and shared libraries with no version drift.
Near-termPlatform team
Faster, simpler onboarding.
Near-termNew hires
Negative · 1
CI and tooling cost until caching is in place.
Near-termProduct teams
Uncertain · 1
Whether ownership discipline holds without hard repo boundaries.
Long-termProduct teams
Signals to watch · would change the conclusion
→CI wall-clock time as merge volume grows.
→CODEOWNERS coverage gaps on shared paths.
Layer 7 / 7Score & publish

Review house strength

See how the house scores across evidence, logic, and coverage, what is driving each number, and what would raise it.

54/ 100
Developing
The reasoning is taking shape but leans on thin support. Add evidence and coverage before publishing.
The three scores
EvidenceDeveloping68
How well each claim is backed by a cited, checkable source.
Driving this score3 sourced facts
LogicThin51
Whether assumptions are surfaced and the conclusion follows from them.
Driving this score3 assumptions, conclusion set, 4 implications
CoverageThin37
The range of stakeholder perspectives the house accounts for.
Driving this score3 perspectives
How the overall is weightedEvidence 40% · Logic 35% · Coverage 25%

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