Turborepo is a high-performance build system specifically designed for JavaScript and TypeScript monorepos. It was created by Vercel to address the performance bottlenecks that arise when working with multiple interdependent packages within a single repository. Traditional build tools often re-run tasks for every project, even if their inputs haven't changed, leading to redundant work and slow CI/CD pipelines.

Turborepo's primary goal is to make monorepos fast again by intelligently caching computation and executing tasks in parallel. It aims to provide a zero-configuration developer experience out of the box, requiring minimal setup to start seeing significant speed improvements. By optimizing the execution of scripts, Turborepo allows development teams to maintain the benefits of a monorepo (like code sharing and atomic changes) without sacrificing productivity due to long build and test times. It acts as a crucial orchestrator for tasks within your monorepo, ensuring efficiency.