Great question :) We have some additional technical info in our core WG repo: https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core

We also did an hour long podcast a few months back that goes into pretty deep detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F9qH-ea5Qk

node.js, as any other native Linux/Windows/Mac application, talks to the OS via a system API. You can emulate that API using WASM, mapping I/O to browser APIs, which is why they mention network is implemented via service workers, for example. File I/O can be mapped to IndexDB... Threads can also be mapped to service workers, I guess... and so on.

emscripten[1] did this a long time ago for C, which is how a bunch of native applications have already been ported to run on the browser.

webcontainers[2] seem to do a similar thing but focused on exposing the browser API to the native apps in a way that integrates well with the JS environment.

[1] https://emscripten.org/

[2] https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core

People have made Linux run on the browser, so... Although I don't think this is what they did here.

Man, the yet another layer they've made between code and the CPU makes me uncomfortable. Imagine finding a bug and going through 20 layers to troubleshoot it.

Also: https://www.theregister.com/2017/03/23/cursor_devours_cpu_cy...