Verscel's new TypeScript-to-native compiler, Scriptic, produces tiny standalone binaries — ideal for CLI tools and embedded use cases where shipping a Node.js runtime is impractical.

7:02>> I'm not muting my mics cuz I need to be able to get off the thing. My keyboard is nice and quiet. Can you Can you hear me typing right now? >> No. >> Can you hear me typing right now? >> Cuz I'm a professional. I've been doing this for 20 years. [laughter] >> Great. I I you know, I'm just make I'm just making sure. But um thank you for

7:19your cooperation. >> Scott, please mute your mic. Yeah. [laughter] >> Yeah. You don't have to mute. Just don't breathe directly into the mic. [sighs] [laughter] >> Okay, guys. So, just released, I think. Actually, yeah, I think so. It only has 450 stars so far, but it is a TypeScript to native compiler. And this was released by Versel. And this is interesting because you can take plain old JavaScript code and

7:48compile it into a native binary that needs no runtime. You don't have to ship NodeJS. You don't have to ship bun or any other type of runtime. You get just a really tiny binary of your JavaScript code. um on their homepage they have a really simple example of let's say you have a JavaScript file that has the the Fibonacci sequence inside of it. You can compile that and the resulting binary is

8:12like 8 kilobytes. It's tiny. Um but you can run this directly from the terminal just like you would any natively compiled program. Um so this is super interesting I think especially for like shipping CLI tools. So, like I've been building my own personal software and personal CLI tools, but every time I do that, I usually reach for Go because it's really easy to create like a standalone binary

8:36that doesn't require like a a node modules folder and you can just easily ship a single binary. [snorts] But this is looking really good for stuff like that. Um, and I have a couple of demos for you. So, the first thing I had AI build for me was this JSON formatter tool. Um, and so when you look at the code, it is it's just it's just TypeScript there. You can see the only

8:57import I have here is from Node FS. And essentially they have that mapped to um native file system operations, but it's actually not Node.js itself. It's just a Node compatible API. And this CLI tool is kind of like jQ if you've ever used that where you can pass it a JSON file and it will format it on the command line or you can uh ask for specific properties. But if you look at

9:20the codes, it's just plain old TypeScript where like u I also added colorizing which I'll show you. So it can show it formatted with color in the terminal. And then um there are things like getting properties formatting but zero dependencies. And to see this thing in action, if I just do uh JSON tool uh format and then I have an example.json JSON and it just spits it out in formatted uh

9:48style with coloring uh syntax highlighting. Um because you'll see like if I just cat that example file. >> Yeah, >> it's it's just a big old blob. >> Um and so all of this is happening natively. Um and >> so like but what what's actually happening natively? Is this like taking every single line of JavaScript and converting it to the Rust equivalent? Is it is it compiling it? Is it using