Shopify distinguished engineer Burke Libbey posted on November 1 that moving to a monorepo has been a boon for agents at Shopify; it needs thoughtful tooling and has downsides that take effort to mitigate, but he would not go back. He was replying to Darren Shepherd, who said a day earlier that he hates the idea that monorepos are great for agents. Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke then quoted Burke and recalled Mikhail Parakhin telling him that every engineer hates the idea of moving to a monorepo, yet once it is there no engineer would want to work somewhere without one. Tobi's post drew about 1,115 likes, 454 bookmarks and 89K views and set off a wide debate. These are practitioner opinions, not an official technical announcement.
Key Takeaways
- ✓Original post: @tobi, Nov 1, 15:39 UTC, about 1,115 likes, 454 bookmarks, 95 replies and 89K views at fetch time
- ✓Shopify distinguished engineer Burke Libbey wrote that moving to a monorepo has been a boon for agents at Shopify; it needs thoughtful tooling and its downsides take effort to mitigate, but he would not go back
- ✓On the other side, Darren Shepherd (Rancher and k3s background) posted on Oct 31 that he hates the idea that monorepos are great for agents and that the best way to scale is to avoid scaling
- ✓Mikhail Parakhin replied to Tobi's retelling: "True story! And now, with agents, it more true than ever."
- ✓Supporters in the quote posts say agents can see every caller at once and get cross-stack type checking and atomic changes; skeptics ask whether agents make independent, separately evolving repos more attractive
Key Decision Metrics at a Glance
Turn your technical choice into a development budget
Compare 40 dev plans & simulate token costs vs $20/mo subscriptions
In-Depth Technical Analysis
Background
Whether code should live in one big repository (a monorepo) or be split across many is an old engineering debate. Coding agents add a new angle: can the agent see all the context it needs? On October 31, Darren Shepherd, known for Rancher and k3s, posted that he hates the idea that monorepos are great for agents. On November 1 a Shopify engineer and then Shopify's CEO pushed back.
How it works
Shopify distinguished engineer Burke Libbey said moving to a monorepo has been a boon for agents inside the company, but it needs thoughtful tooling and has downsides that take real effort to mitigate. Supporters gave three main reasons: when an agent changes an interface it can see every caller, it can type-check across the whole stack, and it can make atomic changes across services in one commit.
Evidence and pushback
There is no quantitative data in this thread. Shopify has not published the size of its migration, build times or any agent productivity numbers. Tobi Lütke's post drew about 1,115 likes and 89K views, and Mikhail Parakhin replied that it is truer than ever with agents. The other side has not gone away: some argue agents make small, independently evolving repos more attractive.
What developers can use
If your agents keep hitting "I don't have access to that repo" or "that's outside the current directory", start small: put your most tightly coupled services in one repository, or give the agent a workspace that combines several repos. Before a full migration, set up per-directory build caching, code ownership and access controls, or the classic monorepo problems will show up first. Treat this as practitioner experience, not a verified result.
Benchmark side-by-side against alternatives, or calculate monthly token cost vs subscription break-even.
Discussion & Comments
0Sign in to join the discussion
Connect with AI developers to exchange benchmark insights.