Your finished site runs in a browser, but almost every tool that builds it runs in Node.js 2,131 , the JavaScript runtime built on Chrome 1 's V8 86,723 engine. Vite 25,978 , webpack 3,824 , ESLint 39,810 , Prettier 68,264 , TypeScript and Playwright 26,280 are all npm 2,036 packages, so installing Node.js and learning one package manager is the first practical step in any modern front-end project.
Three decisions set up that environment. You choose which Node.js release to run and how to switch between releases (Installing Node.js), which package manager downloads your dependencies (npm, Yarn, pnpm and Bun), and how package.json describes the project and its commands (package.json and Scripts). You do not need to write server code in Node.js for any of this; JavaScript teaches the language itself.