So if I understand right, what makes this lighter than electron is the fact that only webkit2 is used instead of embedding the whole chromium app.
I see mentions of WKWebView(the system webkit) in the code[0], and while I don't know any Windows programming, they are #including <mshtml.h>[1] - looks like a system included web view (presumably the one that edge was based on). The linux build requires libwebkit2gtk-4.0-dev to be installed[2] - they're dynamically linked to webkit2gtk.
[0] https://github.com/neutralinojs/neutralinojs/blob/b10e065c97...
[1] https://github.com/neutralinojs/neutralinojs/blob/07fdc3c1c7...
[2] https://github.com/neutralinojs/neutralinojs/blob/master/REA...
Developing an app requires node, but it will not be needed at runtime if I get this right.
What they might actually do is to locally launch a HTTP server which renders the app if you call it on any browser (localhost:8080 in the examples). The chrome of the app is actually a thin layer that use the default OS web browser. That is why the memory footprint is much less higher that alternatives like electron.
The Javascript side calls the system via the local network, passing through this router: https://github.com/neutralinojs/neutralinojs/blob/master/cor...
I hope that there is some form of authentication to make sure no random web apps are accessing the API.