Port Kill - Process Killer by Port

What This Skill Does

Port Kill is a streamlined, cross-platform developer utility designed to eliminate the friction of manually hunting down processes blocking your local ports. Instead of executing complex, multi-stage command chains like lsof -i :port | grep LISTEN | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9, this tool provides a singular, consistent interface to identify and terminate processes. Whether you are running on macOS, Linux, or Windows, the tool abstracts the underlying platform-specific commands—utilizing lsof on Unix-based systems and netstat on Windows—to provide a unified experience. It enables developers to free up stalled development servers, verify port availability, or inspect existing socket connections with minimal overhead.

Installation

To integrate this utility into your workflow, ensure you have Node.js installed on your machine. You can either use it directly via npx or install it globally for persistent access.

Global installation:

npm install -g @lxgicstudios/port-kill

For OpenClaw environment integration, run the following command within your terminal:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/lxgicstudios/port-kill

Use Cases

• Development Environment Cleanup: Rapidly terminate hanging development servers (e.g., Vite, Webpack, or local databases) that refuse to shut down gracefully.
• Port Conflicts: Quickly identify if a specific port is already in use by another application and clear it to allow your current project to start.
• Diagnostic Auditing: Use the list or check functionality to audit which background services are occupying common ports like 3000, 8080, or 5432.
• Finding Available Ports: Dynamically locate the next free port when your preferred port is unavailable, allowing for seamless automated deployments.

Example Prompts

1. "Hey OpenClaw, please kill the process currently running on port 3000."
2. "Check if port 8080 is being used and tell me the process ID."
3. "I need to start a server on port 5000, but it is taken. Find me the next available port starting from 5000."

Tips & Limitations

• Force Killing: Use the --force or -f flag with caution, as it sends a SIGKILL signal, which prevents applications from saving data or performing cleanup tasks.
• Permissions: You may need to run this tool with elevated privileges (sudo/Administrator) depending on the process owner you are attempting to terminate.
• Cross-Platform Consistency: While the CLI provides a unified experience, ensure your system PATH includes npm binaries to allow the command to execute from any directory. This tool is intended for local development environments and should not be used as a primary process management tool in production server environments.