--- title: Ant, a lightweight JavaScript runtime | daily.dev description: Ant is a new JavaScript runtime built from scratch on its own engine called Ant Silver — not a wrapper around V8, JSC, or SpiderMonkey. It ships as a single... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/ant-a-lightweight-javascript-runtime-ojpqhm0mk twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Ant, a lightweight JavaScript runtime | daily.dev og:description: Ant is a new JavaScript runtime built from scratch on its own engine called Ant Silver — not a wrapper around V8, JSC, or SpiderMonkey. It ships as a single... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/ant-a-lightweight-javascript-runtime-ojpqhm0mk og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/OJPqhM0mK.png og:image:alt: Ant, a lightweight JavaScript runtime og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Ant, a lightweight JavaScript runtime **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 2 min read · 5 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Ant is a new JavaScript runtime built from scratch on its own engine called Ant Silver — not a wrapper around V8, JSC, or SpiderMonkey. It ships as a single 9.1 MB binary, runs npm packages and TypeScript natively without a build step, and claims near-V8 performance with a 5.4 ms cold start. Key features include a VM-isolated sandbox using KVM/Hypervisor.framework for running untrusted code, built-in Wasm support, a Node-compatible API, WinterTC conformance, and a package installer claimed to be up to 40x faster than npm. It also ships with its own package registry at ants.land that speaks the npm protocol. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. 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