ruv-swarm MCP crashes on Node 24: better-sqlite3 missing prebuilt binaries

[sparkling]

Description

ruv-swarm@1.0.20 MCP server crashes immediately on Node 24 (v24.13.0) with:

Could not locate the bindings file. Tried:
 → .../better-sqlite3/lib/binding/node-v137-linux-x64/better_sqlite3.node

Root Cause

package.json declares "better-sqlite3": "^11.6.0". When installed via npx, npm resolves to better-sqlite3@11.10.0, which does not ship prebuilt binaries for Node 24 (ABI node-v137). The native addon compilation fails silently — build/Release/ contains obj/ dirs but no .node binary.

better-sqlite3@^12.0.0 adds Node 24 support with prebuilt binaries.

Fix

Bump the dependency in package.json:

-    "better-sqlite3": "^11.6.0",
+    "better-sqlite3": "^12.0.0",

Affected Files

• src/sqlite-pool.js — import Database from 'better-sqlite3'
• src/persistence.js — import Database from 'better-sqlite3'
• src/sqlite-worker.js — import Database from 'better-sqlite3'
• src/mcp-tools-enhanced.js — uses SwarmPersistencePooled (indirect)

Environment

• Node: v24.13.0
• npm: 11.8.0
• OS: Linux x64
• better-sqlite3 resolved: 11.10.0 (no prebuilts for node-v137)

Workaround

# Clear npx cache and reinstall with better-sqlite3@^12
RS_DIR=$(find ~/.npm/_npx -path "*/node_modules/ruv-swarm" -type d | head -1)
cd "$RS_DIR" && npm install better-sqlite3@"^12.0.0" --no-save

Note

@claude-flow/cli is unaffected because it uses sql.js (pure WASM SQLite) which has no native bindings.

Affected Versions

ruv-swarm 1.0.20

Related Issues

None