Pin public npm registry so Dependabot can rebase npm PRs (closes #67)

[frankbria]

Closes #67.

Problem

@dependabot rebase/recreate failed on every frontend npm PR (#50, #52, #54, #58, #60) with:

Dependabot can't access a private package registry without explicit configuration.

…even though every dependency resolves from public npm (verified: no repo .npmrc, no registries: block, all package-lock.json resolved URLs are registry.npmjs.org, no git/file/private deps). Backend (uv) and github-actions PRs rebased fine — the gap was npm-ecosystem-specific, which is why we had to rebase the frontend PRs by hand while clearing the backlog.

Fix

Dependabot's npm updater sources the registry from a committed .npmrc (or a registries: block). This repo had neither, so the error is literally accurate — there was no explicit registry config. Added src/frontend/.npmrc pinning the public registry:

registry=https://registry.npmjs.org/

No auth token (the registry is public; tokens belong in Dependabot secrets, never the repo). Side benefit: CI/local npm installs are now deterministic about the registry.

Verification

• npm ci in src/frontend succeeds with the committed .npmrc; npm config get registry → https://registry.npmjs.org/; no token in the file.
• Final confirmation is post-merge: once on main, @dependabot recreate on a stuck frontend PR should succeed instead of erroring. I'll trigger that after merge to validate.

Note

This is the minimal documented remedy. If it doesn't fully clear the error, the fallback is an org/repo-level Dependabot registries: entry — but that's heavier and shouldn't be needed for public-only npm.

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ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 292c567 and 069aaa8.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• src/frontend/.npmrc

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch chore/issue-67-dependabot-npm-registry

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