Installation fails with UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x9c in position 3900: invalid start byte

[jkri-ch]

Description

Installation fails during Shell Config:

──────────────────────────────────────────── [5/7] Shell Config ────────────────────────────────────────────
  → Configuring shell alias...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<frozen runpy>", line 198, in _run_module_as_main
  File "<frozen runpy>", line 88, in _run_code
  File "/home/johnr/.pilot/installer/installer/__main__.py", line 6, in <module>
    main()
  File "/home/johnr/.pilot/installer/installer/cli.py", line 481, in main
    sys.exit(cmd_install(args))
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/johnr/.pilot/installer/installer/cli.py", line 367, in cmd_install
    run_installation(ctx)
  File "/home/johnr/.pilot/installer/installer/cli.py", line 233, in run_installation
    step.run(ctx)
  File "/home/johnr/.pilot/installer/installer/steps/shell_config.py", line 164, in run
    alias_existed = alias_exists_in_file(config_file)
                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/johnr/.pilot/installer/installer/steps/shell_config.py", line 32, in alias_exists_in_file
    content = config_file.read_text()
              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib/python3.12/pathlib.py", line 1030, in read_text
    return f.read()
           ^^^^^^^^
  File "<frozen codecs>", line 322, in decode
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x9c in position 3900: invalid start byte

Steps to Reproduce

1. curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maxritter/pilot-shell/main/install.sh | bash

Expected vs Actual Behavior

Expected installation to work, installation did not work.

Environment

• OS: Ubuntu 24.04
• Claude Code version: 2.1.84
• Pilot version: Latest
• Tier: Trial

Error Output

UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x9c in position 3900: invalid start byte

Checklist

• [ x] I am using the latest version of Pilot Shell
• [ x] I have searched existing issues to avoid duplicates
• [ x] I can reproduce this consistently with the steps above

[maxritter]

@jkri-ch Thanks for reporting! This will be fixed in the next version of Pilot Shell coming out soon ;)