This: <script type="text/javascript" src="node.js"></script> Allows you to do this in a Chrome App: var http = require('http'); http.createServer(function (req, res) { res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'}); res.end('Hello World\n'); }).listen(1337, '127.0.0.1'); console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/'); This is actually Node.js code running the http listener on Chrome's