Developer Enablement Briefing — October 8, 2025

Executive briefing: Node.js v22.0.0 shipped on April 23, 2024 with runtime features that land long before the October 2025 Active LTS window. This release-day briefing inventories functionality, performance changes, and compatibility risks that engineers must evaluate separately from Zeph Tech’s later LTS enablement guidance.

Feature deltas

WebSocket API GA. The core team promoted the built-in globalThis.WebSocket implementation (backed by Undici) to stable, aligning with browser semantics and enabling streaming workloads without extra client libraries.
Permission model controls. Node 22 expands the experimental --permission flag family (--allow-fs-read, --allow-fs-write, --allow-child-process, --allow-env, --allow-worker, and granular network allowlists) so teams can enforce default-deny resource policies at runtime.
V8 12.4 uplift. The V8 engine upgrade unlocks the v flag for Unicode set regexes, improves Intl.NumberFormat throughput, and accelerates Array.fromAsync and WebAssembly compilation paths, reducing startup and hot-loop latency.
node --run preview. Core now executes package.json scripts directly via node --run <script>, trimming shell wrappers and making cross-platform task orchestration easier for monorepos.

Migration blockers

Native addon rebuilds. The release bumps Node-API and V8 ABIs, forcing node-gyp consumers (for example, sharp, bcrypt, sqlite3) to publish Node 22 builds or ship source distributions teams can compile in CI.
Permission enforcement design. Release Working Group notes flag that enabling --permission without curated allowlists breaks test runners that spawn child processes, access environment variables, or watch the filesystem—pipelines must codify policies before enforcement.
Automation baselines. GitHub Actions and other CI providers introduced opt-in Node 22 images on release day; workflows pinned to Node 20 stay on the older runtime until actions/setup-node matrices are updated.

Action items

Benchmark WebSocket workloads and HTTP upgrades on Node 22 to validate backpressure handling and TLS negotiation without community polyfills.
Regenerate binary artifacts for all Node-API dependencies, capturing compatibility reports for security and change-management evidence.
Prototype --permission policies in staging and document the minimum allowlists build systems, bundlers, and observability agents need before enforcing runtime guards.
Publish enablement notes on node --run adoption so developer tooling, telemetry hooks, and documentation stay in sync when teams reduce reliance on npm run wrappers.

Sources

Zeph Tech decouples release-day reconnaissance from LTS adoption programs—arming platform leads with compatibility evidence, CI/CD guardrails, and upgrade playbooks the moment a runtime lands.