LTRAC-910: ref(cli) - Reduce create-catalyst to a thin wrapper over catalyst create

[jorgemoya]

Linear: LTRAC-910
Part of LTRAC-138 — consolidating create-catalyst into the catalyst CLI (Phase 2).

What/Why?

create-catalyst shipped its own full copy of the scaffolding flow (create/init/integration/telemetry + a large utils//prompts/). Now that @bigcommerce/catalyst owns create, this reduces create-catalyst to a thin wrapper that delegates to it — single source of truth, mirroring how create-next-app fronts next.

Delegation (option B — spawn): the entry resolves the @bigcommerce/catalyst bin from its own dependency tree (createRequire → the package's bin) and spawns catalyst create, forwarding all args with inherited stdio and propagating the child's exit code / signals. Because @bigcommerce/catalyst is a regular dependency, pnpm create catalyst / npx create-catalyst install it alongside the wrapper — no global catalyst needed.

• Added @bigcommerce/catalyst (workspace:^) as a dependency; dropped ~20 runtime deps the old in-package commands required.
• Deleted the duplicated commands/, utils/, prompts/, hooks/ (kept node-version.spec.ts, moved to src/).
• Bumped the tsup target to node24 so esbuild preserves import.meta.url (a lower target shimmed it to {}, which broke createRequire).

Scope note (changed from the original ticket)

The ticket assumed init + integration were ported into @bigcommerce/catalyst. They weren't: integration was dropped (LTRAC-909 canceled) and init's useful behavior became catalyst channel link (LTRAC-908). So this wrapper is scaffold-only — create-catalyst's init/integration/telemetry subcommands are dropped. In the consolidated CLI: init → catalyst channel link, integration → dropped, telemetry → catalyst telemetry.

Testing

pnpm build, pnpm typecheck, pnpm lint, pnpm test all pass in packages/create-catalyst (the node-version gating test is retained).

End-to-end: built both packages and ran node packages/create-catalyst/dist/index.js create --help → it shows @bigcommerce/catalyst create's banner + help, confirming delegation. Exit codes/signals are mirrored from the child.

Release / rollout

create-catalyst and @bigcommerce/catalyst must now be published in lockstep — the workspace:^ is rewritten to a concrete version at publish, so the dependency range must include the published catalyst version. Changesets should bump both together.

Migration

pnpm create catalyst / npx create-catalyst UX is unchanged for scaffolding. Anyone who used create-catalyst init/integration/telemetry directly should switch to the catalyst … equivalents noted above.

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated (UTC)
catalyst	Ready	Preview, Comment	Jun 17, 2026 2:10pm

[changeset-bot]

🦋 Changeset detected

Latest commit: acbff49

The changes in this PR will be included in the next version bump.

This PR includes changesets to release 1 package

Name	Type
@bigcommerce/create-catalyst	Major

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[github-actions]

Bundle Size Report

Comparing against baseline from 81b88df (2026-06-29).

No bundle size changes detected.

[github-actions]

Unlighthouse Performance Comparison — Vercel

Comparing PR preview deployment Unlighthouse scores vs production Unlighthouse scores.

Summary Score

Aggregate score across all categories as reported by Unlighthouse.

	Prod Desktop	Prod Mobile	Preview Desktop	Preview Mobile
Score	90	92	92	95

Category Scores

Category	Prod Desktop	Prod Mobile	Preview Desktop	Preview Mobile
Performance	77	90	75	79
Accessibility	95	95	95	98
Best Practices	100	100	100	100
SEO	88	88	100	100

Core Web Vitals

Metric	Prod Desktop	Prod Mobile	Preview Desktop	Preview Mobile
LCP	3.3 s	3.6 s	3.7 s	5.8 s
CLS	0.04	0	0	0.02
FCP	1.2 s	1.2 s	1.2 s	1.2 s
TBT	0 ms	0 ms	0 ms	10 ms
Max Potential FID	50 ms	50 ms	50 ms	60 ms
Time to Interactive	3.7 s	3.6 s	3.7 s	5.8 s

Full Unlighthouse report →

[jorgemoya]

Ran this locally:

◢ @bigcommerce/catalyst v1.0.0-alpha.6                                                                                                                  10:06:26 AM

✔ What do you want to name your project directory? my-catalyst-app
✔ Would you like to create a new channel? No
✔ Which channel would you like to use? Canary Catalyst Demo Site
ℹ Creating 'my-catalyst-app' at '/Users/jorge.moya/dev/catalyst/my-catalyst-app'                                                                       10:06:38 AM
ℹ Downloading bigcommerce/catalyst#@bigcommerce/catalyst-core@latest...                                                                                10:06:38 AM
ℹ Resolved @bigcommerce/eslint-config-catalyst to ^1.0.0                                                                                               10:06:40 AM
ℹ Resolved @bigcommerce/catalyst-client to ^1.0.2                                                                                                      10:06:40 AM
✔ Dependencies installed successfully.
✔ Initialized a git repository.                                                                                                                        10:07:29 AM
✔ Created 'my-catalyst-app' at '/Users/jorge.moya/dev/catalyst/my-catalyst-app'                                                                        10:07:29 AM
Next steps:                                                                                                                                             10:07:29 AM

  cd my-catalyst-app && npm run dev

[jorgemoya]

I believe major is fine, unless we think otherwise.

[parthshahp]

Agreed