Workspace task orchestration

pnpm -r run <script> schedules a graph of workspace tasks. A task is a script in one workspace project, identified as <project>#<script>. It becomes ready after every task it depends on completes successfully, and ready tasks run under the --workspace-concurrency limit.

Independent tasks do not wait for an unrelated project to finish. Their start and completion order is therefore not guaranteed.

Configure task dependencies

Declare task relationships under tasks in pnpm-workspace.yaml:

pnpm-workspace.yaml

packages:
  - packages/*

tasks:
  build:
    dependsOn:
      - ^build
  test:
    dependsOn:
      - build

Each dependsOn entry has one of these forms:

Entry	Meaning
build	The build task in the same project
^build	The build task in each selected workspace dependency of the project

In this example, pnpm -r run test first runs build in each project. A project's build waits for build in its workspace dependencies.

A task with no entry under tasks defaults to depending on the same task in its workspace dependencies. For example, an unconfigured build behaves as dependsOn: ['^build'], preserving the usual dependencies-before-dependents behavior.

warning

Once a task has an entry under tasks, an omitted dependsOn is the same as dependsOn: []. If you configure another field and still want the default topological relationship, declare it explicitly:

pnpm-workspace.yaml

tasks:
  build:
    concurrency: 2
    dependsOn:
      - ^build

Task dependencies stay inside the projects selected by --filter and includeWorkspaceRoot. A dependsOn entry does not widen that selection.

Projects without a script

If a selected project does not have a script named by the graph, pnpm treats that task as a pass-through. The task is reported as skipped after its own dependencies complete, so a package without build does not sever the build chain between its workspace dependencies and dependents.

Limit concurrency for one task

Set concurrency to a positive integer to limit how many instances of a named task may run across workspace projects at once:

pnpm-workspace.yaml

tasks:
  build:
    concurrency: 2
    dependsOn:
      - ^build

This limit is separate from the workspace-wide --workspace-concurrency limit. A build waiting for one of its two slots does not occupy a workspace slot, so an unrelated ready task can still run.

Inspect the task graph

Use --dry-run to resolve the graph without running scripts:

pnpm -r run --dry-run build

The output is one stable topological ordering, with ties broken by project directory. It is not a prediction of dispatch order: independent tasks may run in any order.

Add --json to receive graph nodes and edges:

pnpm -r run --dry-run --json test

{
  "tasks": [
    {
      "project": "packages/app",
      "script": "build",
      "missingScript": false,
      "dependsOn": [
        { "project": "packages/lib", "script": "build" }
      ]
    },
    {
      "project": "packages/app",
      "script": "test",
      "missingScript": false,
      "dependsOn": [
        { "project": "packages/app", "script": "build" }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

project is relative to the workspace root. The tasks array and each dependsOn array are sorted by project and script so the output is stable.

Cycles

pnpm checks the graph after project selection and task expansion. A cycle fails before any script starts with ERR_PNPM_TASK_CYCLE, and the error names the participating tasks.

Set ignoreWorkspaceCycles to true only when the cycle is deliberate. pnpm then warns, removes the ordering among the cycle's members, and may run them in any order relative to each other.

Recursive run options

--resume-from <package_name>

The named package's requested task is the resume point.

pnpm records which tasks pass as a recursive run or exec proceeds. When that record belongs to the same invocation — the same selected projects, command, arguments, and execution-affecting settings (including script bodies for run) — --resume-from skips exactly the tasks the record says passed, wherever they sit in the graph, and runs everything else. A record left by a different invocation is ignored rather than trusted.

Without a usable record — a first run, a run interrupted before any task passed, or a node_modules directory pnpm cannot write to — pnpm falls back to graph position: it omits the resume point's transitive dependencies, treating them as already completed, but still runs the resume task, its dependents, and unrelated tasks in the selected graph. That assumption holds after a failed run and not after a cancelled one, where a dependency may never have started.

--reverse

pnpm reverses every edge in the resolved task graph, including relationships declared with dependsOn. Tasks that normally depend on another task run before it.

--no-bail

After a task fails, tasks that depend on it are skipped. With --no-bail, independent ready tasks continue to run and the command exits with a non-zero code after they settle.

With the default --bail, pnpm stops dispatching new tasks after the first failure and cancels the tasks already running, along with the processes they started. Otherwise a task that never exits on its own, such as a watcher or a dev server, would keep a failed run alive indefinitely. A cancelled task is not reported as a failure of its own; the failure that stopped the run is the one reported.

Output

pnpm inherits a script's output directly when at most one script can be running at any time, either because workspace concurrency is 1 or because the graph forms one serial chain. When scripts can overlap, pnpm pipes their output so it can prefix or aggregate it. Use --stream for immediate prefixed output or --aggregate-output to print each task's output together after it finishes.

Commands that do not use tasks

The tasks declarations configure recursive run. Recursive exec follows workspace project dependencies but has no script task name, so it does not join declared dependsOn relationships. It still uses the dependency-aware scheduler and the persisted --resume-from state described above.

--no-sort removes graph ordering, and --parallel implies --no-sort. Consequently, both options ignore tasks declarations; --reverse and --resume-from also have no ordering edges to transform.

Other dependency-aware workspace commands

Workspace install, rebuild, pack, publish, stage, and lifecycle work uses the same ready-queue scheduling principle: work for a project starts as soon as its workspace dependencies finish. These commands follow the workspace package graph, not the script relationships under tasks, and no longer wait for an unrelated topological group to finish first.