feat: add monorepo workspace configuration and auto-detection

[digitarald]

Summary

Adds workspaces support to agentrc.config.json for monorepo projects, enabling architects to define sub-project boundaries with scoped areas, auto-detection, and eval session scoping.

Changes

Configuration (agentrc.config.json)

• New workspaces array: { name, path, areas[] } — groups areas under a sub-project directory
• Workspace area applyTo patterns are relative to the workspace path
• Full validation: rejects traversal, absolute paths, root ., malformed entries
• parseConfigAreas() extracted as shared validator for flat and workspace areas
• parentArea validation spans both flat and workspace areas

Auto-detection (detectWorkspaces())

• Strategy 1: Scans for .vscode folders as workspace markers (depth 3)
• Strategy 2: Groups sibling auto-detected areas by common parent directory (2+ siblings)
• Exported for use in CLI and VS Code extension

Init command

• Bootstraps agentrc.config.json with detected workspaces and standalone areas
• Path-based deduplication (areas inside a workspace are excluded from standalone list)

Eval integration

• EvalCase.workingDirectory — per-case workspace scoping
• askOnce() passes workingDirectory to Copilot SDK createSession()
• Boundary validation prevents directory escape

Area model

• Area.workingDirectory — set for workspace areas, used in eval and instruction generation
• Workspace areas get namespaced names (frontend/app)

Documentation

• README: new Configuration File section with schema and examples
• examples/agentrc.config.json: full monorepo example
• docs/plugins.md: cross-reference to config example

Tests

• 16 new tests across 4 describe blocks covering config parsing, workspace detection, area flattening, and edge cases (traversal, malformed entries, path .)

Verification

• npm run typecheck — clean
• npm run lint — clean
• npm run test — 524/524 pass
• Extension build + typecheck — clean

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Adds monorepo workspace support to AgentRC’s config/analysis pipeline so areas can be grouped under workspace roots, auto-detected, and used to scope eval sessions and generated artifacts across both the CLI and VS Code extension.

Changes:

• Extend agentrc.config.json schema with workspaces[] and add workspace auto-detection (detectWorkspaces()).
• Flatten workspace areas into namespaced Area entries and propagate workspace scoping into eval scaffolding + eval runs.
• Update init to bootstrap an agentrc.config.json with detected workspaces/areas and document the new configuration in README/examples/docs.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 11 out of 11 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
vscode-extension/src/types.ts	Re-exports new config/workspace types to keep extension aligned with CLI types.
vscode-extension/src/services.ts	Re-exports detectWorkspaces for extension feature reuse via the CLI service layer.
src/services/evaluator.ts	Adds per-eval-case workingDirectory support and passes it into Copilot SDK sessions with boundary checks.
src/services/evalScaffold.ts	Adds workingDirectory to eval case schema and scaffolding prompt guidance for workspace-scoped evals.
src/services/analyzer.ts	Implements workspace config parsing, workspace area flattening, and detectWorkspaces() logic.
src/services/tests/analyzer.test.ts	Adds tests for workspace config parsing, workspace detection, and workspace area flattening.
src/commands/init.ts	Bootstraps agentrc.config.json based on detected workspaces + standalone areas.
examples/agentrc.config.json	Adds a monorepo example config demonstrating areas, workspaces, and policies.
examples/README.md	Links to the new sample project config.
docs/plugins.md	Cross-references the new monorepo config example.
README.md	Documents workspace configuration and init auto-bootstrapping behavior.

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

src/services/analyzer.ts:1329

• parentArea validation is currently done against a single global set of un-namespaced area names aggregated from all workspaces (and flat areas). If two workspaces contain the same area name, a workspace area can incorrectly “validate” a parentArea that only exists in a different workspace, and then later flattening/namespacing will still produce a broken reference.

Consider validating workspace-area parentArea references within the same workspace’s areas (or validating against the post-namespacing names) to avoid cross-workspace name collisions.

    // Validate parentArea references across all areas (flat + workspace)
    const allConfigAreas = [...areas];
    for (const ws of workspaces) {
      allConfigAreas.push(...ws.areas);
    }
    const areaNames = new Set(allConfigAreas.map((a) => a.name.toLowerCase()));
    for (const area of allConfigAreas) {
      if (area.parentArea && !areaNames.has(area.parentArea.toLowerCase())) {
        area.parentArea = undefined;

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 11 out of 11 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

[Copilot]

findVSCodeDirs() stops scanning when depth >= maxDepth, which means with WORKSPACE_SCAN_MAX_DEPTH = 3 it never inspects directories at depth 3 (only 0–2). That makes the “depth 3” behavior in the PR description effectively off by one and can miss .vscode markers in deeper nested workspaces. Consider allowing scanning at depth === maxDepth and only preventing recursion beyond the limit. Also, the try/catch around safeReadDir() is redundant because safeReadDir already swallows errors and returns an empty array.

Suggested change

	if (depth >= maxDepth) return [];
	const results: string[] = [];
	let entries: string[];
	try {
	entries = await safeReadDir(dir);
	} catch {
	return [];
	}
	if (depth > maxDepth) return [];
	const results: string[] = [];
	const entries = await safeReadDir(dir);

[Copilot]

parseConfigAreas() validates that applyTo is a string or string[], but it does not actually normalize/trim the stored patterns. This allows entries like applyTo: " docs/**" or applyTo: ["src/**", " "] to be accepted, which can produce broken/ineffective glob matching downstream (frontmatter, area detection, etc.). Suggest trimming each pattern (and filtering/rejecting empty patterns) before pushing the area.

Suggested change

	if (allPatterns.some((p) => p.split("/").includes(".."))) continue;
	areas.push({
	name: e.name as string,
	applyTo,
	const normalizedPatterns = allPatterns.map((p) => p.trim()).filter((p) => p.length > 0);
	if (normalizedPatterns.length === 0) continue;
	if (normalizedPatterns.some((p) => p.split("/").includes(".."))) continue;
	areas.push({
	name: e.name as string,
	applyTo: Array.isArray(applyTo) ? normalizedPatterns : normalizedPatterns[0],