diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 729bf0ce..6c6739b2 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -37,4 +37,5 @@ dist
 test/test-data/go-ipfs-repo/LOCK
 test/test-data/go-ipfs-repo/LOG
 test/test-data/go-ipfs-repo/LOG.old
-types
\ No newline at end of file
+types
+.tmp
diff --git a/http-rpc-runtime.sh b/http-rpc-runtime.sh
new file mode 100755
index 00000000..ad63bf09
--- /dev/null
+++ b/http-rpc-runtime.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+
+set -xeo pipefail
+
+# this script  sets up the Rube Goldberg machine for testing HTTP RPC wire format change end-to-end
+# context:
+# - https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/pull/8183
+# - https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs/pull/3922
+
+
+rm -rf node_modules .tmp
+mkdir .tmp
+cd .tmp
+    git clone -b feat/pubsub-require-multibase https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs.git
+    cd js-ipfs
+        npm install
+        npm run build
+        npm run link
+        cd ../..
+# make sure npm uses js-ipfs libs from feat/pubsub-require-multibase branch
+npx connect-deps link .tmp/js-ipfs/packages/ipfs .tmp/js-ipfs/packages/ipfs-http-client --connect
diff --git a/package.json b/package.json
index 0e69128d..09c646ab 100644
--- a/package.json
+++ b/package.json
@@ -23,6 +23,7 @@
     "npm": ">6.0.0"
   },
   "scripts": {
+    "postinstall": "bash ./http-rpc-runtime.sh",
     "lint": "aegir lint",
     "build": "aegir build",
     "pretest": "aegir build --esm-tests",