npm "notarget No matching version found" - Fix Range That Cannot Resolve

A notarget error means npm walked the dependency graph and found a (often transitive) requirement whose range matches no published version. The constraint comes from inside your tree, not the top-level package you named.

What this error means

npm install fails with notarget No matching version found for <pkg>@<range>, where the package and range are ones you never wrote directly - they were introduced by a dependency of a dependency.

npm output

npm error code ETARGET
npm error notarget No matching version found for @acme/core@^5.0.0-next.12.
npm error notarget In most cases you or one of your dependencies are requesting
npm error notarget a package version that doesn't exist.

Common causes

A transitive dependency pins a yanked or pre-release version

A nested dependency requires a version (often a pre-release or a just-unpublished one) that the registry no longer serves, so the range resolves to nothing.

A stale lockfile referencing a removed version

The committed lockfile encodes a version that was unpublished after the fact; a clean install can no longer find it.

How to fix it

Trace and pin the offending dependency

Find who requires the missing range and pin or override it to a version that exists.

Terminal

npm view @acme/core versions --json
# pin the parent that pulls the bad range, or override:
npm install @acme/parent@latest
rm -f package-lock.json && npm install

Regenerate the lockfile cleanly

Delete package-lock.json and reinstall so the tree resolves against current registry data.
If a transitive range is genuinely unsatisfiable, add an overrides entry to a published version.
Commit the regenerated lockfile.

How to prevent it

Avoid depending on pre-release ranges that can be unpublished.
Use overrides to pin unsatisfiable transitive ranges.
Regenerate the lockfile after upstream yanks.