#​612 — February 19, 2026

Read on the Web

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Node.js Weekly

Halving Node.js Memory Usage with Pointer Compression — Does 50% memory savings in production sound good? Cloudflare, Igalia, and the Node project have collaborated on node-caged, a Docker image containing Node 25 with V8 pointer compression enabled. Matteo digs into all the details here – this is neat work, though there are tradeoffs to consider.

Matteo Collina

Foundations of Agent Development — Create an AI agent from scratch in this detailed video course, hosted by Scott Moss. You'll learn tool calling, agent loops, evals, token usage monitoring, and more — including which agent framework might be right for you.

Frontend Masters sponsor

npm v11.10.0 Releasednpm install gains a --allow-git flag that defaults to all for now, but is expected to become none in npm 12+. Maintainers can also now add/update trusted publishing configs across multiple packages in a single operation. Also, and curiously not covered in the release post, is --min-release-age.

GitHub

IN BRIEF:

📊 Node.js vs Deno vs Bun Performance Benchmarks — A few weeks ago, RepoFlow did a handy version-by-version Node benchmark and now they’re back with some micro-benchmarks comparing Node, Deno and Bun. As always with benchmarks, apply a critical eye!

RepoFlow Team

🛠 Code & Tools

Introducing @stoolap/node: Fast Bindings to an Embedded SQL DatabaseStoolap is a high-performance, pure-Rust embedded SQL database that compiles to WebAssembly (play with it here). It now includes NAPI-RS powered Node.js bindings. In this post, Semih tackles the inevitable “Why not just use SQLite?” question: chiefly, lock-free MVCC means readers never block writers.

Semih Alev

fetch-network-simulator: Intercept fetch to Simulate Poor Network Conditions — Intercepts fetch and applies rules to drop random requests, delay them, slow them down, etc. Or you could just switch to my mobile provider.

Karn Pratap Singh

Clerk Just Made Auth More Affordable — 50,000 MRUs Now Free — MFA, device tracking, and satellite domains included in Pro. Unlimited apps on every plan. Automatic volume discounts.

Clerk sponsor

BrowserPod 1.0: Universal WASM-Powered In-Browser Sandboxes — From the team behind CheerpX comes a new browser-based code sandbox, launching with Node.js and with Python, Ruby, Go, and Rust planned next. Target use cases include in-browser agentic coding, web IDEs, and interactive docs, with the option to expose virtual services via public URLs.

Alessandro Pignotti

npm-check-updates 19.5: Find Newer Versions of Your Dependencies — Specifically, newer versions than your package.json allows. Includes a -i interactive mode so you can look at potential upgrades and then opt in to them one by one. You can also specify ‘cooldown’ strings like “7d” or “12h” to limit suggestions to libraries that have been published for a certain amount of time.

Raine Revere

Tangerine: DNS over HTTPS for Node Apps — A drop-in replacement for dns.promises.Resolver that performs DNS lookups over HTTPS (so-called “DoH”) with built-in retries, timeouts, smart server rotation, and more.

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📰 Classifieds

🚀 HTML to PDF made easy. One simple API that scales. PrinceXML under the hood for full CSS & JS support. EU-hosted, free to start.


🔥JSNation 2026 lineup: Matt Pocock, Luca Mezzalira & more speakers revealed! Let’s talk modern web dev in beautiful Amsterdam this June.

📢  Elsewhere in the ecosystem

A few stories in the broader landscape: