> Up until now, yt-dlp has been able to use its built-in JavaScript "interpreter" [1]

Wow, this is equal parts fascinating and horrifying.

Edit, after looking into it a bit: It seems like a self-contained build of deno weighs in at around 40 MB (why?), so I can see why they tried to avoid that and appreciate the effort.

[1] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/2025.09.23/yt_dlp/jsin...