I don't think it is a good idea to rely on `cwd`. It means that the application behaves very differently depending on where you start it from:
 - `node app.js` works as expected
 - `node icars/app.js` does not work
 - `node ../another-loopback-app/app.js` called from `icars` folder is a disaster.

A possible alternative is to use `process.mainModule ? process.mainModule.filename : process.argv[1]]` to get the path to the main application file and use the location of that file as root directory. (I am using this trick in Node Inspector). Beware that there is no main module when running REPL - I suppose we can fall back to `process.cwd()` in such case (and only in that case). 

The name `cwd` is actually quite misleading in the light of my comments above. A name like `appRoot`,  `appRootDir`, `configDir` would be more appropriate.