Change working directory in my current shell context when running Node script

The correct way to change directories is actually with process.chdir(directory). Here’s an example from the documentation:

console.log('Starting directory: ' + process.cwd());
try {
  process.chdir('/tmp');
  console.log('New directory: ' + process.cwd());
}
catch (err) {
  console.log('chdir: ' + err);
}

This is also testable in the Node.js REPL:

[monitor@s2 ~]$ node
> process.cwd()
'/home/monitor'
> process.chdir('../');
undefined
> process.cwd();
'/home'