Cannot read property 'then' of undefined when installing ember-cli-coffeescript

Upon installing ember-cli i wanted to install the coffeescript add on using:

ember install ember-cli-coffeescript

as shown in the documentation but I get the error:

WARNING: Skipping npm install: package.json not found
package.json not found
Cannot read property 'then' of undefined
TypeError: Cannot read property 'then' of undefined
   at Class.run (/home/daniel/.nvm/versions/node/v7.6.0/lib/node_modules/ember-cli/lib/tasks/addon-install.js:43:7)
at Class.run (/home/daniel/.nvm/versions/node/v7.6.0/lib/node_modules/ember-cli/lib/commands/install.js:39:25)
at Class.<anonymous> (/home/daniel/.nvm/versions/node/v7.6.0/lib/node_modules/ember-cli/lib/models/command.js:241:20)
at initializePromise (/home/daniel/.nvm/versions/node/v7.6.0/lib/node_modules/ember-cli/node_modules/rsvp/dist/rsvp.js:588:5)
at PromiseExt.Promise (/home/daniel/.nvm/versions/node/v7.6.0/lib/node_modules/ember-cli/node_modules/rsvp/dist/rsvp.js:1076:31)
at new PromiseExt (/home/daniel/.nvm/versions/node/v7.6.0/lib/node_modules/ember-cli/lib/ext/promise.js:32:8)
at Class.validateAndRun (/home/daniel/.nvm/versions/node/v7.6.0/lib/node_modules/ember-cli/lib/models/command.js:195:12)
at /home/daniel/.nvm/versions/node/v7.6.0/lib/node_modules/ember-cli/lib/cli/cli.js:130:22
at tryCatch (/home/daniel/.nvm/versions/node/v7.6.0/lib/node_modules/ember-cli/node_modules/rsvp/dist/rsvp.js:538:12)
at invokeCallback (/home/daniel/.nvm/versions/node/v7.6.0/lib/node_modules/ember-cli/node_modules/rsvp/dist/rsvp.js:553:13)

I don't understand what this means. I have seen this question asked in different contexts for Angular.js but those questions are related to peoples code. This question is related to the installation itself. this is a brandnew project and install.

Any ideas?

Solution

package.json file usually in the project root, called package.json - this file holds various metadata relevant to the project. This file is used to give information to npm that allows it to identify the project as well as handle the project's dependencies.

Make sure you have a proper inited Ember project. If you do not have a package.json file. Try to re-init your project using Ember init inside your project folder.

Attention: the init process may overwrite the existing files in your project. Backup if it is important.