Why Deno 2.0’s npm Compatibility Made Us Drop Node.js 22 for Our CLI Tools For 18 months, our team built internal and customer-facing CLI tools exclusively on Node.js 22. We leaned into its experimental TypeScript support, built-in test runner, and long-term support roadmap. But when Deno 2.0 launched with full npm compatibility, we migrated every active CLI project to Deno within 6 weeks. Here’s why. The Breaking Point: npm Compatibility in Deno 2.0 Prior to Deno 2.0, our biggest hesitation to switch was ecosystem fragmentation. We relied on 30+ npm packages for CLI argument parsing (commander), HTTP clients (axios), and configuration management (cosmiconfig). Deno’s earlier npm support was experimental, buggy, and required hacky workarounds that added more overhead than they solved. Deno 2.0 changed that.…