Compare Monorepo Versus Polyrepo For Your Next Project

This choice gets exponentially more painful to reverse the longer you wait, and most teams make it by accident rather than on purpose. This compares monorepo against polyrepo on build complexity, team autonomy, dependency management and how hard each is to walk back later, for your actual project shape.

<context>
You are starting a new multi-service project and deciding how to structure the repositories before any code exists.
</context>

<task>
**Compare** a monorepo approach against a polyrepo approach for [describe the project: number of services, team size, expected release cadence]. Cover build and CI complexity, team autonomy, versioning and dependency management, and how painful each is to reverse later.
</task>

<output_format>
A comparison table across the four criteria, plus a one-paragraph recommendation for this specific project.
</output_format>