Thanks for the reply Isaac! This doesn’t match my first-hand experience unfortunately. Are there any circumstances under which npm install with a lockfile present deviates from the lockfile where npm ci does not?

For example, why did this person experience the changing lockfile? https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/17101

Or why do these docs say?

> Whenever you run npm install, npm generates or updates your package lock https://docs.npmjs.com/files/package-locks

Oh, this seems like what I experienced: https://stackoverflow.com/a/45566871/283398

It does appear that npm works somewhat differently than the “obvious” way we would expect package managers to work vis a vis lockfiles :(

At least npm ci gets the job done for my use case :)