fix: surfacing 429s as not found to users

[johnnyreilly]

Resolves: #1174

This is a speculative PR which changes the approach to surface an explicit "Hit npm rate limit, try again in a moment" message when 429s happen. I wondered if this would be useful?

No worries if it's not - but I thought I'd share the idea! This doesn't contain all i18n locales. If the approach is helpful I think with AIs help I can probably provide that.

PS first time doing any Vue / Nuxt - please bear with my mistakes!

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated (UTC)
npmx.dev	Ready	Preview, Comment	Feb 8, 2026 9:49am

2 Skipped Deployments

Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated (UTC)
docs.npmx.dev	Ignored	Preview	Feb 8, 2026 9:49am
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lunaria/files/en-GB.json	Localization changed, will be marked as complete.
lunaria/files/en-US.json	Source changed, localizations will be marked as outdated.

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🔄️	The source for this localization has been updated since the creation of this pull request, make sure all changes in the source have been applied.

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Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 30.43478% with 16 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.
✅ All tests successful. No failed tests found.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
app/composables/npm/useNpmSearch.ts	30.43%	11 Missing and 5 partials ⚠️

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[coderabbitai]

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

This PR implements rate-limit handling for npm searches. The useNpmSearch composable now detects and handles HTTP 429 rate-limit errors by introducing an isRateLimited reactive flag, catching errors during fetch operations, and resetting the flag on successful searches or empty queries. The search page component uses this flag to display a rate-limit message instead of search results. Translations for the rate-limit notification have been added across multiple locale files.

Possibly related PRs

• feat: unifying npm registry requests with caching #641: Modifies the HTTP/caching implementation in the same useNpmSearch.ts composable to use $npmRegistry and $npmApi, which could interact with the rate-limit handling introduced in this PR.

Suggested reviewers

• danielroe

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	The PR successfully addresses issue #1174 by implementing rate-limit detection in useNpmSearch, surfacing an explicit message to users when 429 errors occur, and improving UX during rate-limiting scenarios.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	All changes are directly scoped to resolving the rate-limit issue: composable logic, UI conditional rendering, and i18n translations for the rate-limit message. No unrelated modifications detected.
Description check	✅ Passed	The pull request description directly relates to the changeset, referencing issue #1174 and explaining the implementation of an explicit rate-limit message UI.

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[danielroe]

thank you ❤️

[github-actions]

Thanks for your first contribution, @johnnyreilly! 💫

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