fix(create): quiet git-init, silence version-check warning, gate next-steps hint

[DaveHanns]

Summary

Three small, closely related cosmetic-but-noisy defects in the CLI's user-facing output. All hit any first-time apify create user and any user running multiple apify commands in a row.

1. apify create emits ~13 lines of Git's "master branch" hint

Because git init runs with default flags, modern Git prints its multi-line advice about the initial branch name every time:

$ apify create my-actor -t ts-crawlee-playwright
...
hint: Using 'master' as the name for the initial branch. This default branch name
hint: is subject to change. To configure the initial branch name to use in all
hint: of your new repositories, which will suppress this warning, call:
hint:
hint:   git config --global init.defaultBranch <name>
hint:
hint: Names commonly chosen instead of 'master' are 'main', 'trunk' and
hint: 'development'. The just-created branch can be renamed via this command:
hint:
hint:   git branch -m <name>
Initialized empty Git repository in /.../my-actor/.git/

Fix: invoke git -c init.defaultBranch=main init -q. On Git 2.28+ the -c config overrides the default so no hint is printed, and -q silences the "Initialized empty Git repository" line. Older Git versions ignore the unknown config key and still work — the branch just happens to be master there.

2. Version-check warning fires on every invocation when the GitHub API trips

useCLIVersionCheck already debounces the fetch to 24h via ~/.apify/state.json, but on failure it does not update lastChecked. That means whenever the GitHub API returns non-200 (rate limit / captive portal / transient DNS), every subsequent apify invocation retries the fetch and prints:

Warning: Failed to fetch latest version of Apify CLI, using the cached version instead.

I've seen 5+ of these in one script run. The warning also isn't actionable — nothing changes if the user reads it.

Fix:

• Update lastChecked even on failure, so the 24h debounce covers failed attempts too.
• Drop the user-facing warning; the failure remains visible via APIFY_CLI_DEBUG.
• Catch synchronous fetch errors (previously they would bubble up and crash the check silently but noisily).

3. Post-scaffold "Next steps: apify run" can point to a broken next step

For TypeScript templates whose package.json start script is tsx main.ts, the success message unconditionally says:

✅ Actor 'my-actor' created successfully!

Next steps:

cd "my-actor"
apify run

If devDependencies were skipped during install (NODE_ENV=production in CI, npm ci --omit=dev, or a Dockerfile that does npm install --omit=dev before the user runs the Actor), apify run fails immediately with:

sh: tsx: not found

Fix: after a Node install, read the runner named by scripts.start, check whether it resolves in node_modules/.bin/, and if it's declared as a dependency but missing, replace the run hint with:

⚠️  Dev dependencies do not appear to be fully installed (missing 'tsx' in node_modules/.bin).

Next steps:

cd "my-actor"
npm install --include=dev
apify run

The check is scoped to the runner declared in the template's own package.json, so it doesn't false-positive on system-provided commands (node, python, etc.).

Files changed

• src/commands/create.ts — pass -c init.defaultBranch=main -q to git init; call the new helper before formatting the success message.
• src/lib/create-utils.ts — add findMissingRunnerBinary; extend formatCreateSuccessMessage with missingRunnerBinary.
• src/lib/hooks/useCLIVersionCheck.ts — record lastChecked on failure, drop the warning, catch fetch rejections.

Test plan

• Existing test/local/commands/create.test.ts passes (9/9).
• tsc --noEmit clean.
• oxlint --type-aware + oxfmt --check clean on the touched files.
• Manual: apify create foo -t ts-crawlee-playwright — success message has <3 lines of git output.
• Manual: run apify create while offline / with Authorization: Bearer bogus proxying api.github.com — no repeated "Failed to fetch latest version" warnings.
• Manual: NODE_ENV=production apify create bar -t ts-crawlee-playwright — success message points at npm install --include=dev instead of apify run.

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Surfaced during an evaluation of Apify surfaces for agent-driven Actor development.