Was the Monorepo Really Best for Coding Agents?

Earlier this year, I thought monorepos were the obvious choice for AI-native development.

The reason was context closure.

A coding agent works better when the code, tests, design decisions, infrastructure, and development rules it needs are available inside the same execution environment. It should not have to wait for a person to paste a decision from Slack, explain a convention that lives in someone's head, or retrieve a requirement from a system it cannot update.

A monorepo made that easier. Put the product and its development context in one place, give the agent tools to search it, and the repository becomes a closed environment in which the agent can work.

I still believe context closure matters. What changed was my view of what the repository was closing.