Auto-update permanently broken for installs made under the old keboola-agent-cli package name (executable conflict, cause swallowed)

[jordanrburger]

Summary

On an install made under the old package name (keboola-agent-cli), auto-update can never succeed. Every kbagent invocation prints the same two lines to stdout and then silently continues on the stale version:

Updating kbagent v0.58.0 -> v0.94.0...
Auto-update failed; continuing with current version.

No cause is surfaced — not with --verbose, not in --json mode (the banner is also emitted above the JSON document, which breaks naive parsers).

Root cause

The distribution was renamed keboola-agent-cli → keboola-cli, but both ship the same kbagent executable. uv therefore treats the upgrade as a new tool rather than an upgrade of the existing one: it resolves and builds keboola-cli==0.94.0 successfully, then refuses at the executable-link step because kbagent is still owned by the keboola-agent-cli tool entry.

Running the exact upgrade_command that kbagent --json version reports shows the error the auto-updater swallows:

$ uv tool install --upgrade git+https://github.com/keboola/cli
...
 + keboola-cli==0.94.0 (from git+https://github.com/keboola/cli@b5ac882)
...
error: Executable already exists: kbagent (use `--force` to overwrite)

uv tool list confirms the two entries are distinct:

keboola-agent-cli v0.58.0
- kbagent

So the upgrade_command advertised in version --json is itself non-functional for every user who installed before the rename — the advice is self-defeating, and the auto-updater hides why.

Reproduction

1. Install under the old name: uv tool install git+https://github.com/keboola/cli at a pre-rename commit (tool entry is named keboola-agent-cli).
2. Run any command, e.g. kbagent --json version.
3. Observe the "Auto-update failed" banner, with the version pinned at the old release indefinitely.

Workaround that works

uv tool uninstall keboola-agent-cli
uv tool install git+https://github.com/keboola/cli

Config is preserved — ~/Library/Application Support/keboola-agent-cli/config.json is still the path the renamed package reads, and all 24 registered projects survived. (Worth confirming that is intentional and not a second latent rename waiting to strand people's configs.)

Suggested fixes

1. Surface the error. "Auto-update failed" with no cause is the real cost here; a stale CLI ran for an unknown number of releases without anyone knowing why. Print the underlying stderr at least under --verbose.
2. Make upgrade_command correct for legacy installs — either emit --force, or detect a keboola-agent-cli tool entry and emit the uninstall-then-install pair.
3. Add a doctor check for a legacy keboola-agent-cli tool entry, since that is exactly the population that is silently frozen.
4. Keep the banner off stdout in --json mode — it currently precedes the JSON document.

Environment

• macOS (Darwin 25.5.0), arm64
• uv 0.12.1
• kbagent 0.58.0 → 0.94.0
• Installed via uv tool install (no install_channel in version --json)

Related but distinct: #353 (auto-update falsely reporting failure due to a 120s timeout on WSL). This one is not a timeout — it fails instantly and deterministically.

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