Ran into an issue after doing an npm install on a project. Not sure what change exactly caused this issue but it's an issue nonetheless (in two separate machines as well).

Was getting this error when bundling (browserify and watchify, with many different versions).

After some digging, changing this line
https://github.com/strongloop/loopback-boot/blob/master/lib/bundler.js#L97

to

var instructionsFile = path.resolve(__dirname, '..', 'instructions.json');

or

var instructionsFile = path.resolve(__dirname, '..', 'node_modules', 'instructions', 'instructions.json');

and adding the file node_modules/instructions/package.json with "main": "instructions" solved the issue.

Will submit PR shortly.