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Please tell me you are not running a NodeJS release that hasn't been supported for at least 3 years...

Optional chaining was added in v14 (2020), and it sure looks like that is the issue here.

Brand new, clean install of npm.

Poor code + doc hygiene is the problem here.

The question is which version of node, not npm.

It doesn't matter. The install was broken as was written. That's poor hygiene.

It does matter.

Why yes, you're right, poor code hygiene and poor documentation hygiene does matter. We finally agree.