pnpm-workspace.yaml defines the root of the workspace and it allows to include/exclude directories from the workspace. By default, all packages of all subdirectories are included.

An example of a pnpm-workspace.yaml:

packages:
  # all packages in subdirs of packages/ and components/
  - 'packages/**'
  - 'components/**'
  # exclude packages that are inside test/ directories
  - '!**/test/**'

The root package.json is always included, even when custom location wildcards are used.