cli: preflight git check and network retries in openui create

[devin-ai-integration]

What

openui create could fail in ways that were avoidable or poorly explained:

• If git isn't installed (common on Windows), the CLI only found out when git init was spawned, and printed a generic "git is not installed or not found in PATH."
• Transient network errors during the template/example sparse checkout, the catalog fetch, or dependency install failed the whole run on the first attempt.
• Any non-CreateError thrown while resolving the template source was labelled as a network TEMPLATE_MISSING failure, even when it was a filesystem error.

This PR fails fast with an actionable message when git is missing, retries network-class failures with exponential backoff, and makes retries visible in telemetry. The existing failure_stage / error_code taxonomy is unchanged (no new codes).

Changes

• Git preflight — new lib/git-preflight.ts: ensureGitAvailable() spawns git --version at the start of runCreateApp (skipped in OPENUI_SOURCE_DIR debug mode). On ENOENT it throws CreateError("preflight", …, "process", "GIT_MISSING") with a per-OS hint (winget/choco/git-scm link on Windows, brew/xcode-select on macOS, apt/dnf on Linux). The same message is reused by runGit's ENOENT branch.
• Retry helper — new lib/retry.ts:

  withRetry(label, fn, options?)
  // options: { maxAttempts = 3, baseDelayMs = 1000 /* 1s, 2s */, shouldRetry = isNetworkError, onRetry, sleep }
  isNetworkError(err) // CreateError with errorClass === "network"

  Each retry logs "<label> failed (<code>); retrying in Ns (attempt i/3)...". On final failure it stamps errorMetadata.attempts on the CreateError, so cli_create_failed / cli_dependency_install_failed now carry an attempts property.
• Applied to: the whole git sparse-checkout sequence in checkoutSource (fresh temp dir per attempt), the raw.githubusercontent catalog fetch in fetchSourceFile, and the dependency install in installProjectDependencies. Only network-class errors retry; GIT_MISSING (process), PERMISSION_DENIED/SOURCE_MISSING (filesystem) and cancellations do not. The 404 SOURCE_MISSING from fetchSourceFile is now classified filesystem (matching checkoutSource) so a bad path isn't retried.
• Telemetry — new cli_network_retry event (failure_stage, attempt, max_attempts, delay_ms, error_class, error_code), emitted by Telemetry.reportNetworkRetry(stage) on the base class in lib/telemetry.ts; callers pass tel.reportNetworkRetry("source_checkout" | "dependency_install") as onRetry, threaded through loadCreateCatalog → catalog loaders, resolveTemplateSource, and scaffoldExample.
• TEMPLATE_MISSING — throwTemplateSourceError() classifies non-CreateError failures via cliErrorProperties, so errno errors become filesystem/PERMISSION_DENIED etc.; the true network fallback now says Could not download template "<name>" from GitHub: … Check your network connection and try again. (Unknown template names were already rejected earlier as INVALID_TEMPLATE.)
• Network error messages in runGit / fetchSourceFile now include a "check your network connection" hint.
• Changeset (patch) included.

Test Plan

• Verified locally
  • pnpm --filter @openuidev/cli lint:check, format:check, build pass
  • OPENUI_DEBUG=1 OPENUI_SOURCE_DIR=… node dist/index.js create --help still works
  • Retry helper, git preflight (nonexistent binary → GIT_MISSING with Windows hint) and template-source error classification were exercised with ad-hoc unit tests during development (not committed)
• Not verified on a real Windows box without git.

Checklist

• I linked a related issue, if applicable
• I updated docs/README when needed (changeset added; no README changes needed)
• I considered backwards compatibility (no new error codes; attempts and cli_network_retry are additive telemetry)

Link to Devin session: https://app.devin.ai/sessions/a4b6312c6116461a8911fb7e6995da11
Open in Devin Desktop: https://app.devin.ai/desktop/session/a4b6312c6116461a8911fb7e6995da11?variant=devin
Requested by: @zahlekhan

[devin-ai-integration]

I'll fix CI failures and address comments from users with write access. I'll skip comments containing "(aside)".

• Disable automatic comment, CI, and merge conflict monitoring

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated
openui-docs	Ready	Preview	Sep 23, 2026 10:23am UTC

[AbhinRustagi]

CI checks are failing, take a pull

[devin-ai-integration]

Merged main into the branch (244d350); CI re-running.