diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 558fbe1e5..b46dadf07 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -73,7 +73,7 @@ curl http://data.nextstrain.org/ncov.json --compressed -o data/ncov.json
 ...
 ```
 
-If you've installed auspice from source, we have helper scripts to make all the datasets & narratives you see on nextstrain.org available locally:
+If you've installed auspice from source, we have a helper script to download a number of datasets for testing:
 
 ```bash
 # from the auspice src directory
diff --git a/package.json b/package.json
index 7575a42c6..91887172f 100644
--- a/package.json
+++ b/package.json
@@ -15,8 +15,6 @@
   },
   "main": "index.js",
   "scripts": {
-    "create-data-dir": "env bash ./scripts/create-data-dir.sh",
-    "postinstall": "npm run create-data-dir",
     "view": "node auspice.js view --verbose",
     "dev": "node auspice.js develop --verbose",
     "start": "npm run view",
diff --git a/scripts/create-data-dir.sh b/scripts/create-data-dir.sh
deleted file mode 100755
index 6e03198e6..000000000
--- a/scripts/create-data-dir.sh
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,10 +0,0 @@
-#!/bin/bash
-
-if ! [ -d "data" ]; then
-  echo "Creating empty data directory"
-  mkdir data
-fi
-if ! [ -d "narratives" ]; then
-  echo "Creating empty narratives directory"
-  mkdir narratives
-fi