Might it not be better to specify the rootDir of the package.json you're looking for in the task? Akin to the options object in other types of task.

NVM: Just seen the path property. And this as about auto-detection. Ignore me

Actualy, trying this out, the path property doesn't seem to work even on specified tasks. May or may not be related. If not related, I'll add a separate issue.

Sorry for not replying or adding information to this issue, I am in the middle of moving home and have very limited PC access for a couple of weeks.

I have same problem.
My folder structure looks like below.

.
├── client
│   ├── package.json
│   ├── src
│   └── tsconfig.json
├── host
│   ├── package.json
│   ├── src
│   └── tsconfig.json
├── README.md
└── workspace.code-workspace

I have two TypeScript project each client and host directories.

I defined npm task each package.json(client and host).
Tasks I defined are very simple like this.

# host/package.json
"build": "parcel watch --no-hmr --no-source-maps src/main.ts",

# client/package.json
"build": "parcel watch --no-hmr src/main.ts"

I opend these projects with VSCode as multi-workspace-projects and I tried to show task list with ">Tasks: Run Task".
Unfortunately I could see only defaut tasks provided by VSCode not tasks I defined. This looks like this.

tsc:build - client/tsconfig.json
tsc:build - host/tsconfig.json

So I switched to open each one project with VSCode in the terminal.

cd host # or client
code .

And did the same thing as above.

Then I could see a npm task (npm:build) which I defined in package.json

I guess VSCode does not auto-detect npm tasks when it is opend as multi-workspace-projects.

Thank you.

The task provider is now searching for package.json file inside the workspace with the exception of node_modules. Additional exclusions can be defined using the npm.exclude setting.

To verify:

• create folder structure with package.json as described here npm script not detected if the package.json is not in root folder #31217 (comment)
• verify that scripts in a package.json in a subfolder are detected and provided when you execute Tasks>Run Task
• verify that you can exclude folders using the npm.exclude setting

I think the problem of people having projects in sub-folders is much wider than just here. I've proposed that sub-folders should be able to be full-fledged WorkspaceFolders so they can have their own settings, debug configs, etc. here -> #45399

I think it'd solve a bunch of issues!

I think this has caused a regression in performance and usability in large repositories.

The change here a6dde81#diff-3b21ed98f2447f0d29ed636bdcf00c98R103 is calling vscode.workspace.findFiles before checking if the main workspace settings have npm.autoDetect set to on/off.

In my large workspaces I have disabled all *.autoDetect configuration options so that my default build task (cmd+shift+b) doesn't have to wait for vscode to look for all build tasks.

Before this change, my default build task started running immediately.
After this change, my default build task spends 20 seconds Fetching build tasks... before finally running my build script.

Github doesn't seem to link to diff lines properly, this is the line that I believe is causing the slowdown with a call to vscode.workspace.findFiles: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/a6dde81592febe579a24ada7b0e6d63b15a37cfd/extensions/npm/src/main.ts#L103