VS Code chat on Windows: npm-installed CLI fails to launch (ENOENT), falls back to a download that times out #1657

Summary

On Windows, the Altimate Code chat in the VS Code extension (altimateai.vscode-altimate-mcp-server 0.14.0) cannot start the CLI when altimate-code is installed with npm i -g. It shows:

download failed: TimeoutError

Run manually in your terminal:

irm https://www.altimate.sh/install.ps1 | iex

Cause

• _resolveAltimateBinary takes the first line of where.exe altimate. With an npm global install that is npm's extensionless shell shim, %APPDATA%\npm\altimate (listed before altimate.cmd).
• _doSpawn calls child_process.spawn(path, ["serve", ...]) without a shell. Windows cannot execute an extensionless shell script, so the spawn fails with ENOENT. Reproduced with plain Node: spawn("<dir>/altimate", ["--version"]) on such a shim gives ENOENT; the same call on ~/.altimate/bin/altimate.exe prints 0.12.8.
• The extension then downloads the standalone build into ~/.altimate/bin, which timed out at the 300 s limit (AbortSignal.timeout), leaving an empty ~/.altimate/bin.
• install.ps1 then reports Version 0.12.8 already installed because it finds the npm copy on PATH, so the suggested manual step does nothing either.

Workaround: npm uninstall -g altimate-code, then run install.ps1.

Suggested fix

On Windows, ignore where.exe results without an executable extension (prefer .exe). Node refuses to spawn .cmd files without shell: true (spawn EINVAL on Node 24.22.1), so an npm global install needs either shell: true for .cmd or launching the platform binary inside the npm package (@altimateai/altimate-code-windows-x64/bin/altimate-code.exe) directly, rather than re-downloading.

Environment

• Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200, x64
• VS Code extension altimateai.vscode-altimate-mcp-server 0.14.0
• altimate-code 0.12.8 (npm global)