v0.5.7

Package @prowl-ai/prowl-skill 0.5.7 · plugins prowl 0.4.4, prowl-cli 0.2.6
(unchanged).

A first run with no key opened a browser and left the operator holding a callback into
a port that had already died. It now refuses to start, and says what to do instead.

Fixed

• The MCP launcher no longer strands the operator in a half-finished OAuth flow.
  With no API key configured, plugins/prowl/.mcp.json used to hand mcp-remote an
  empty Authorization: Bearer header. The server rejects that, and mcp-remote
  falls back to OAuth — which opens a browser and starts a localhost listener to
  catch the callback. An MCP server spawned at agent startup does not survive long
  enough to be there when consent completes: the listener is gone, the redirect hits a
  dead port, and the operator is left holding a URL with an authorization code that
  expires before anything can be done with it.

  Measured on one machine on 2026-08-22: two such flows in a single day, both
  stranded. The second left ~/.mcp-auth/mcp-remote-0.1.43/…_lock.json recording
  {"pid": 68661, "port": 4333} for a process that no longer existed.

  The launcher now resolves the key, and refuses to start without one — printing
  the two supported ways to supply it and exiting 78 (EX_CONFIG, sysexits.h)
  rather than reaching mcp-remote at all. A key that is present but empty or
  whitespace-only counts as absent.

• The README said 22 MCP tools; the server registers 23. npm run check:contract
  reads the count off https://prowl.chat/mcp/ and had no claim in the README to check
  it against — the number sat one line below a heading no gate reads. The skill page
  already said 23.

Added

• test/mcp_launch_test.js — 12 checks that execute the real .mcp.json launcher
  rather than reading it. A fake npx on the launcher's own PATH captures the argv, so
  the suite can assert both halves: that no key means npx is never reached, and that
  each documented key source (PROWL_MCP_TOKEN, the plugin file, the Codex file)
  reaches mcp-remote carrying that exact key, in that precedence.

  Shadowing npx by PATH alone does not work here — sh -lc is a login shell, and on
  macOS /etc/profile runs path_helper, which pushes an injected PATH entry to the
  end. A .profile in the fake HOME is sourced afterwards and does win; that is what
  the suite uses. Nothing in it touches the network.

  Verified to have teeth: against the previous launcher, 6 of the 12 checks fail, and
  the failure output is the defect itself — 'Authorization: Bearer '. That proof is
  now the fourteenth plant in scripts/negative-self-test.js, so every CI run removes
  the refusal from .mcp.json and requires the suite to go red on npx ran without a key — a suite that quietly stopped checking this would otherwise report the same
  green as one that still does.