[syrusakbary]

Hi HN!

I'm Syrus, from Wasmer. We built Edge.js in a few weeks after different trials trying to bring Node.js to the Edge. We used AI and Codex heavily for this project, as otherwise the timeline would have spanned to a year plus to develop.

The summary of this announcement is that Edge.js:

  * Runs using WebAssembly when in `--safe` mode
  * It's fully compatible with Node.js (passing all their spec tests for non-VM modules)
  * It has a pluggable JS engine architecture: can work with V8, Javascript, SpiderMonkey, QuickJS, Hermes, etc.

Super happy to answer any questions you may have!

[jonny_eh]

> * Runs using WebAssembly when in `--safe` mode

Why is safe mode opt-in?

[gamebak]

noob question, but how can you create a localhost:3000 port, when ported to wasm, in the browser?

I think this is a cool demo for you to show, at least in my mind this might be a little mind blowing + maybe a db?

I know there are wasm dbs availble that are very light, but so that maybe it's a plus to consider.

[gavinray]

Node does not run in a browser?

[syrusakbary]

Yet... stay tuned!

[bhelx]

Just wanted to chime in to say this is really cool. I dreamed of building something like this for the Extism ecosystem but it was a huge lift to unlock all the pieces. This looks like lots of innovation all the way down the stack. Kudos!

[syrusakbary]

Thanks Ben! Took us a bit to figure out the best architecture for it, but once it became clear then it was just a matter of implementing the missing bits.

I think the fact that WASIX is much more mature now have helped to increase development speeds quite a bit!

[larsnystrom]

Maybe I’m just dense, but it says the fs module is fully supported, so what happens when I try to read a file from disk if the app is fully sandboxed?

[syrusakbary]

Only the current working directory will be exposed/mounted to the runtime (we do this to facilitate the DX when running local files without requiring the user to add extra flags).

As a fun exercise, you can try reading process.cwd() from edge in --safe mode and without it.

[micecof]

but what if I want to expose / mount more files in the sandbox?

need docs

[syrusakbary]

Actually agree with you here. It will be a good idea to add docs for the CLI and the WebAssembly sandboxing

[Onavo]

What's the Next.js compatibility like?

[syrusakbary]

Edge.js is fully compatible with Next.js