Stop writing cliAutoInstalled, deprecate in favour of cliUserUninstalled

[wojtekn]

Related issues

• Follow-up to Fix CLI symlink not updated after Studio app update #3713

How AI was used in this PR

Developed with Claude Code assistance.

Proposed Changes

Now that cliUserUninstalled exists as an explicit signal, cliAutoInstalled no longer serves an ongoing purpose. Its original role — preventing re-installation after first launch — is fully handled by cliUserUninstalled (absent = not uninstalled).

The only remaining use is a one-time migration: on first launch of the new version, cliAutoInstalled: true + absent symlink/directory is treated as a deliberate uninstall and sets cliUserUninstalled: true. After that migration runs once per user, cliAutoInstalled is never meaningfully consulted again.

This PR stops writing cliAutoInstalled on new installs and marks it @deprecated in the storage type. The migration block still reads it, so existing users who uninstalled before #3713 shipped are correctly preserved. The flag and migration block can be removed entirely in a follow-up release.

On Windows, this also fixes updateWindowsCliVersionedPathIfNeeded() to run on every launch where the CLI is installed (not only when cliAutoInstalled was set), keeping the proxy .bat path up to date after app updates.

Testing Instructions

• Launch Studio with cliAutoInstalled: true + symlink absent in app.json → cliUserUninstalled should be set to true, CLI not reinstalled
• Launch Studio with cliAutoInstalled: true + symlink present but stale → symlink re-pointed to current app
• Fresh install (no flags set) → CLI installs as normal, cliAutoInstalled is NOT written

Pre-merge Checklist

• Have you checked for TypeScript, React or other console errors?

[fredrikekelund]

Nice to see it was such a simple change. We have an explicit framework for migration in apps/studio/src/migrations, though, so I advise we put the migration code there.

[fredrikekelund]

Let's put this in a apps/studio/src/migrations migration instead.

[wpmobilebot]

📊 Performance Test Results

Comparing e7b9c91 vs trunk

app-size

Metric	trunk	e7b9c91	Diff	Change
App Size (Mac)	2329.13 MB	2329.13 MB	0.00 MB	⚪ 0.0%

site-editor

Metric	trunk	e7b9c91	Diff	Change
load	1745 ms	1748 ms	+3 ms	⚪ 0.0%

site-startup

Metric	trunk	e7b9c91	Diff	Change
siteCreation	8491 ms	8499 ms	+8 ms	⚪ 0.0%
siteStartup	3921 ms	3878 ms	43 ms	⚪ 0.0%

---

Results are median values from multiple test runs.

Legend: 🟢 Improvement (faster) | 🔴 Regression (slower) | ⚪ No change (<50ms diff)

[fredrikekelund]

I tweaked the migration logic so we rely on the canonical isStudioCliInstalled function instead of a custom reimplementation. I've tested this manually and reviewed with Claude locally. LGTM 👍

[wojtekn]

Thanks for tweaking that @fredrikekelund .

I've merged trunk to the branch and solved the conflict.