isittaken

Honest, multi-registry package-name availability checks — for humans and agents.

isittaken checks bare or venue-qualified names across nine package registries and reports one verdict per venue: available, taken, invalid, or unknown. unknown is never presented as available, so an available verdict always means a definitive "no package found here."

Install

# run it without installing
npx @cmgriffing/isittaken check my-package
# or: pnpm dlx @cmgriffing/isittaken check my-package

# or install globally
npm install -g @cmgriffing/isittaken

Requires Node 22.12 or newer.

Usage

isittaken check <names...> [options]

isittaken check my-package
isittaken check "fuzzy picker" other-name --json   # phrases normalized per venue
isittaken check mylib -r npm,pypi,crates           # scope to exact-only venues
isittaken check symfony/console -r packagist       # qualified input -> exact check

| Option | Meaning | Default | | ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------- | --------------- | | -r, --registry <ids> | comma-separated venue ids to scope the run | all nine venues | | --json | machine-readable JSON (preferred by agents) | human table | | --concurrency <n> | max concurrent lookups per venue | 10 | | --timeout <ms> | per-venue lookup timeout | 10000 |

Venues

• Exact, definitive checks — npm, pypi, crates, rubygems, nuget, hex
• Fuzzy for bare words — maven, go, packagist: results carry fuzzy: true; qualified input (e.g. symfony/console) upgrades them to exact checks

Go bare-word search is best-effort and honestly reports unknown when pkg.go.dev rate-limits the client.

JSON output

--json is agent-first: a top-level summary rollup answers "what can I claim?" directly — anyAvailable, per-status counts, and an available list mapping each input to its exact venues (definitive) and its fuzzyVenues (search-index leads to verify).

Non-JSON runs stream per-venue progress checkpoints to stderr while stdout stays clean; --json output is never mixed with progress. Color is automatic and disabled for piped output (NO_COLOR honored).

Exit codes

| Code | Meaning | | ---- | ------------------------------------------------ | | 0 | at least one (name, venue) result is available | | 1 | no name was available at any venue | | 2 | usage error |

Scope notes

• npm scope claimability is intentionally unsupported: npm provides no dependable signal, so scoped targets are reported invalid per venue.
• Availability is observed, not guaranteed — each venue remains the authority. Verify on the venue before publishing.
• Every outbound request carries an identifying User-Agent: isittaken/<version> (+https://github.com/cmgriffing/isittaken).

License

MIT © Chris Griffing. See LICENSE.