Node.js 26.11.0 adds a built-in watchdog for hung processes
The release ships a native --process-timeout flag that kills a stuck process and reports where it stalled, plus a stable process.ref/unref and new HTTP header validators.
Node.js 26.11.0 shipped on 7 October with a native --process-timeout=N flag: pass it a millisecond value and the runtime kills the process if it is still running when the clock runs out, exiting with the familiar Unix 124 code and reporting where execution had stalled. Until now, timing out a hung Node process meant wrapping it in a shell timeout command or rolling your own watchdog.
The release also graduates process.ref() and process.unref() from experimental to stable, adds http.isValidHeaderName() and http.isValidHeaderValue() as standalone validators, and renames the SQLite DatabaseSync and StatementSync classes as part of cleaning up that experimental API.
node --process-timeout=5000 ./worker.js
# exits with code 124 if worker.js is still running after 5sWhy it matters: CI jobs and queue workers that hang instead of crashing are a common source of silent build timeouts and stuck deploys. A built-in flag means one less shell wrapper or custom watchdog script to maintain, on a runtime nearly every JavaScript backend already depends on.