Using WebAssembly for small internal tools

We had a pile of small internal tools that each needed their own runtime: a Python script, a Node script, a Go binary. Deploying them was annoying.

This month we tried compiling a couple to WebAssembly and running them with a single lightweight host. The results:

• Startup time dropped a lot
• One host process instead of three runtimes
• Sandboxing came for free

The catch is tooling. Getting a Python toolchain to WASM is still fiddly, and debugging is not great.

For small, stable tools it's a win. For anything that needs native libraries, I'd wait.

I'm learning WebAssembly more deeply now, mostly the module and memory model. It's a good reminder that "just compile it" hides a lot.