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create --no-install reports "TanStack Intent configured" but writes no AGENTS.md #495

Description

@shivss26

tanstack create --no-install prints that Intent was configured, and then the closing text tells you
your agent config was wired up — but no AGENTS.md is written. Nothing in the output suggests
anything was skipped.

$ pnpm dlx @tanstack/cli create my-app --no-install --no-git --no-toolchain --no-examples
┌  Creating a new TanStack app in my-app...
◇  Dependency installation skipped
◇  TanStack Intent configured
└  Your TanStack app is ready in 'my-app'.

Next steps:

Working with an AI agent? Your agent config (AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md) was wired up by TanStack Intent
with explicit skill mappings for the libraries you installed. ...

$ ls my-app/AGENTS.md
ls: my-app/AGENTS.md: No such file or directory

The same command without --no-install does exactly what it says:

$ pnpm dlx @tanstack/cli create my-app --no-git --no-toolchain --no-examples
$ grep -c '^  - id:' my-app/AGENTS.md
31

The underlying behaviour makes sense — Intent discovers skills by walking installed node_modules,
so with --no-install there is nothing on disk to find yet:

$ cd my-app && pnpm dlx @tanstack/intent list --debug
  packages: 0
  skills: 0
No intent-enabled packages found.

So it's really the reporting that's off, not the logic. Two things that would help:

  1. When the Intent step discovers zero packages, report that instead of TanStack Intent configured
    — something like "skipped — no dependencies installed yet".
  2. With --no-install, drop the "your agent config was wired up" claim from the closing text, and
    point at the follow-up instead: pnpm install && pnpm dlx @tanstack/intent install --map.

It's easy to miss, because the message is confident and a missing file is quiet — I only caught it
while verifying that skill mappings were complete. Anyone who scaffolds with --no-install (to
review the dependency set, or to run installs through their own tooling) ends up with an agent config
that silently never existed.

Environment: @tanstack/cli 0.70.0, @tanstack/intent 0.3.6, pnpm 11.17.0, node 24.18.0,
macOS 26.5.1 (arm64)

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