watch: `NODE_OPTIONS=--watch` causes infinite loop

Version

v25.6.0

Platform

Darwin <redacted> 24.6.0 Darwin Kernel Version 24.6.0: Wed Nov  5 21:33:58 PST 2025; root:xnu-11417.140.69.705.2~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T6000 arm64 arm Darwin

Subsystem

No response

What steps will reproduce the bug?

1. Write the following to test.js and make it executable:

   #!/usr/bin/env node
   console.log('hello');
   

2. NODE_OPTIONS="--watch" ./test.js

How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?

This is always reproducible.

What is the expected behavior? Why is that the expected behavior?

I would expect it to run normally, producing hello in stdout and then exiting.

What do you see instead?

There is no output. I can see in my process list that there are hundreds of node processes spawning.

Additional information

This seems to be the same issue as https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/51159. For additional context, my intent was to reuse a bin entrypoint in package.json but with --watch mode, so under the scripts field it looked roughly like:

"scripts": {
    "dev": "NODE_OPTIONS='--watch' app",
}

...where app is in node_modules/.bin/.

Start by reproducing the executable-entrypoint command with NODE_OPTIONS="--watch" and compare it with issue #51159. Trace the watch-mode handling of the executable and package bin entrypoint, then add or update a regression test; done means the command prints hello once and exits without spawning processes.