Old CLI versions have no in-CLI path to discover or install updates

[jonathanpopham]

Needs investigation / reproduction. No investigate or reproduce label exists on this repo — feel free to relabel.

What I hit

I had supermodel 0.5.1 installed on macOS (arm64) for ~3 days. There was no indication from the CLI that I was behind, and supermodel update did not exist in that version, so I had no in-CLI way to upgrade.

$ supermodel version
supermodel 0.5.1 (6f641cd, 2026-04-13T19:14:57Z)

$ supermodel update
Error: unknown command "update" for "supermodel"

$ supermodel update --check
Error: unknown command "update" for "supermodel"

The only path I found to upgrade was re-running the curl install script:

$ curl -fsSL https://supermodeltools.com/install.sh | sh
Installing supermodel v0.6.10 (darwin/arm64)…
$ supermodel version
supermodel 0.6.10 (786aa72, 2026-04-16T17:45:09Z)

After upgrading, update works as expected:

$ supermodel update --check
supermodel 0.6.10 is up to date

Why this is a problem

• v0.6.0 → v0.6.10 shipped a lot of fixes and features (including update and skill themselves) in ~3 days. A user on v0.5.x or earlier has zero CLI signal that any of it exists.
• The "unknown command" error from update on old versions doesn't hint at the real cause (their binary is too old).
• Anyone who installed via Homebrew or npm and forgot to re-run their package manager is silently stuck.

Suggestions to investigate

1. Startup version-check — once per day (or on a configurable interval), the CLI hits the GitHub releases API and prints a one-line banner if a newer version is available. npm and gh both do this; cheap to implement.
2. Friendlier unknown command message on old binaries — hard, since the old binary can't know what's been added later. But the install script could leave a ~/.supermodel/.installed-version file and a wrapper, or the GitHub release notes could mention "if you're on < 0.6.0 you need to re-install."
3. Auto-update on supermodel setup — the wizard already runs end-to-end; checking for a newer version at the start would catch most users.

Reproduce

# install an older version (replace 0.5.1 with whatever's available)
gh release download v0.5.1 --repo supermodeltools/cli --pattern '*darwin_arm64*'
tar -xzf supermodel_*_darwin_arm64.tar.gz
./supermodel update      # ← unknown command
./supermodel version     # ← no warning that 0.6.10 exists

Environment

• macOS Darwin 25.2.0, arm64
• Originally installed via curl -fsSL https://supermodeltools.com/install.sh | sh
• Binary path: /Users/jag/.local/bin/supermodel

[coderabbitai]

🔗 Related PRs

#49 - Add first-run detection and install-time setup wizard [merged]

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[greynewell]

@jonathanpopham we don't need to worry about supporting old versions because we're in alpha. I support the update detection and friendly reminders to the user when there's a new version as a feature added in the next major patch. We cannot go back in time and update our older npm releases or update the already installed older versions on user's computers.