Unable to Publish the mothx NPM Package Despite It Being Unregistered

[zhenruyan]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Product Feedback

Body

I am the creator of the AI agent called mothx, but I cannot publish the official mothx package to NPM, even though it appears unregistered. I was only able to register mothx-installer instead.
I want to avoid workarounds like community-style mothx@cli, as this creates a confusing and unintuitive user experience in terms of naming semantics.
Is there a way for me to publish directly under the plain mothx package name?

[github-actions[bot]]

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[initial-d]

I checked the public registry endpoint and https://registry.npmjs.org/mothx currently returns 404 Not found, while mothx-installer is published and uses bin: { "mothx": "bin/mothx" }.

So the public package document for mothx is not visible, but that still does not guarantee the name is publishable. The registry can reject a publish for reasons that do not show up as an existing package page: previous deletion/unpublish history, policy/name review, similarity/security checks, or an account/package-specific publishing restriction.

The next useful detail is the exact error from:

npm publish --access public

or, if this is a CLI package from a subdirectory:

cd npm
npm publish --access public

Please include the exact HTTP status and error code/message. For example, 403, 404, E403, E404, ENEEDAUTH, EOTP, or a package-name validation error all point to different causes.

A few concrete checks:

npm whoami
npm config get registry
npm ping
npm view mothx
npm view mothx-installer name version bin

Also verify the package name in package.json is exactly:

{
  "name": "mothx"
}

npm package-name rules are documented here: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v11/configuring-npm/package-json/#name

If npm rejects the plain unscoped name even though the public registry returns 404, there usually is not a self-service way to force-claim it. You would need to contact npm/GitHub support with:

• package name: mothx
• your npm username
• exact npm publish error output
• proof that you maintain the project/repository
• why the unscoped name is needed

For the user-facing CLI experience, you do have one good workaround already: the published package can expose the command name mothx through the bin field. That means users can run:

npm install -g mothx-installer
mothx

If you want cleaner package naming while waiting on support, the usual path is a scoped package:

{
  "name": "@mothx/cli",
  "bin": {
    "mothx": "bin/mothx"
  }
}

Then users install @mothx/cli but still run the mothx command. That does not solve the plain mothx package name, but it preserves the command-line semantics while keeping the package identity official.