I'm opening this issue because:

• npm is producing an incorrect install.

What's going wrong?

When executing npm install in a directory that there is no package.json the lock file is still created with only the lock file version:
{ "lockfileVersion": 1 }
Should be good to not create the lock if there is no package.json in the working directory.

How can the CLI team reproduce the problem?

• create a new directory mkdir test
• enter the newly created directory cd test
• execute npm install

supporting information:

• npm -v prints: 5.2.0
• node -v prints: v6.10.2
• npm config get registry prints: //registry.npmjs.org/
• Windows, OS X/macOS, or Linux?: macOS