Three pages stop telling agents to install a package that does not exist - #8
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Boyd's ruling 2026-08-18, on a finding from the rail measurement.
agenticterminal.ai instructed agents to run:
npm install -g @agenticterminal/mcp-server
The package is not published. The whole @agenticterminal scope is not published:
registry.npmjs.org returns {"error":"Scope not found"}. The instruction was live
on /, /how-it-works/ and /skill/, which is a broken promise made to precisely the
audience that surface exists for.
Three source locations, one of them the shared AgentInstallSnippet component that
the homepage renders. All three now point at the hosted endpoint, which works: I
exercised it with a JSON-RPC initialize and it answers as at-directory 0.0.1.
THIS IS THE REVERSIBLE HALF OF THE FIX, NOT THE BETTER ONE. Publishing is better,
and the package is closer to ready than the instruction being wrong suggests:
scripts/bundle.mjs already inlines the private @at-directory/core workspace dep
and emits plain JS that runs on Node 20+, and prepublishOnly already invokes it.
What is missing is the npm ORG: the scope does not exist, creating it is an
account action, and publishing is Boyd's gate either way.
So if the scope is created and the package published, revert this commit rather
than writing the line again. It was correct copy describing a thing that had not
happened yet.
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Boyd's ruling, on a finding from the rail measurement.
The problem
agenticterminal.aiinstructed agents to run:The package is not published, and neither is the scope.
registry.npmjs.orgreturns{"error":"Scope not found"}for@agenticterminal.Live on
/,/how-it-works/and/skill/. A broken promise made to precisely the audience that surface exists for.The change
Three source locations, one of them the shared
AgentInstallSnippetcomponent the homepage renders. All three now point at the hosted endpoint, which works: exercised with a JSON-RPCinitialize, answers asat-directory0.0.1.Which is easier, since that was the question
Changing the copy is easier. Publishing is better. They are not close on quality.
The package is far closer to ready than a wrong instruction suggests:
scripts/bundle.mjs@at-directory/coreworkspace dep and emits plain JSprepublishOnlybin/stdio.jsThe missing piece is the npm org. The
@agenticterminalscope does not exist. Creating it is an account action, andnpm publishis Boyd's gate either way. That is the whole distance between here and the better fix.If you create the scope and publish, revert this commit rather than rewriting the line. It was correct copy describing something that had not happened yet.
Flagging before this merges
This repo has another session's uncommitted work in the tree, six files:
I committed only my three by explicit path and touched none of theirs. The last one is inside
packages/mcp-server/, which is the package this ruling is about, so somebody may be working on the thing we are deciding whether to publish. Worth resolving who that is before merging this or acting on the publish option.Not self-merging.