Is it possible to use the Illustrator Javascript SDK without actually launching Illustrator itself? Or is there some kind of more lightweight non-visual engine that can be running instead of the full-blown app interface?

I’m looking to create some Javascript files to batch trace thousands of JPGs and to do it without all the bloat of Adobe Bridge. I’m hoping to run the javascript file via a command line rather than through Illustrator’s FILE->SCRIPT menu.

Plus, any time I try it with bridge it always crashes after a few hundred so I have to keep starting the process manually where it stopped multiple times. I was hoping to be able to maybe execute this file with arguments dynamically and remotely. The less useless visual stuff I have running on my desktop (or maybe even a server), the better.