reap

Intelligent stale dev process killer. Finds and kills orphaned dev processes (next dev, vite, jest, pnpm run dev, headless Chrome, etc.) without touching real applications.

Every dev accumulates zombie processes -- old dev servers, forgotten test runners, headless browsers from builds that crashed. reap uses a weighted scoring system to identify them with high confidence, so you don't have to killall node and nuke everything.

Install

cargo install reaport

Or build from source:

git clone https://github.com/vignesh07/reap.git
cd reap
cargo build --release
cp target/release/reap /usr/local/bin/

Usage

reap scan              # List stale dev processes
reap scan --all        # Include lower-scoring processes
reap scan --json       # Machine-readable output
reap kill              # Interactive confirm then kill
reap kill --pick       # Confirm each process individually (y/n)
reap kill --force      # No confirmation
reap kill --dry-run    # Show what would be killed

Example

$ reap scan

reap: found 19 stale dev processes

 PID    AGE   CPU   MEM    SCORE  PROJECT                COMMAND
 50347  5d4h  0.0%  5MB    19.5   remotion-video [dup]   /home/user/remotion-video/node_modules/.remotion/chro...
 51068  5d4h  0.0%  5MB    19.5   remotion-video [dup]   /home/user/remotion-video/node_modules/.remotion/chro...
 24254  9d3h  0.0%  528KB  16.0   my-app [dup]       node /home/user/my-app/node_modules/.bin/concurre...
 30630  9d2h  0.0%  5MB    12.0   web                    node /home/user/my-app/node_modules/.bin/vite
 46794  6d2h  0.0%  564KB  7.0    wedding-app            node ./node_modules/.bin/next dev -p 3000
 46795  6d2h  0.0%  55MB   7.0    wedding-app            next-server (v16.1.5)

  + 14 child processes will also be terminated
  Total memory recoverable: ~116MB

$ reap kill --dry-run

Will kill 19 processes:

  PID 50347 5d4h remotion-video chrome-headless-shell ...
      dev tool: chrome-headless (+4.0)
      exe in node_modules (+2.0)
      cwd in project dir (+2.0)
      orphaned (ppid=1) (+3.0)
      no terminal (+1.5)
      age > 24h + orphaned (+3.0)
      duplicate dev server (+4.0)
      + 3 child processes

[DRY RUN] No processes were killed.

$ reap kill --pick

reap: 19 stale dev processes found
Confirm each process (y/n/q):

  PID 50347 5d4h remotion-video chrome-headless-shell ... (+3 children)
  Kill? [Y/n] y
  PID 24254 9d3h my-app node .../concurrently ... (+1 children)
  Kill? [Y/n] y
  PID 30630 9d2h web node .../vite
  Kill? [Y/n] n
  PID 46794 6d2h wedding-app node ./node_modules/.bin/next dev -p 3000
  Kill? [Y/n] y

Selected 3 of 4 processes.

  SIGTERM PID 50347 (chrome-headless-shell)... killed
  SIGTERM PID 24254 (node)... killed
  SIGTERM PID 46794 (node)... killed

reap: killed 3/3 processes

How It Works

Processes accumulate staleness points from multiple signals. Only processes scoring 6.0 or above get flagged. This avoids false positives from any single heuristic.

Scoring Signals

Age and orphan signals only apply to processes that already have dev context (pattern match, node_modules exe, or project directory). A random daemon that's old and orphaned won't be flagged.

Processes younger than 5 minutes are never flagged.

What's Protected

These are never killed regardless of score:

• Root-owned processes and system users (uid < 500)
• Processes under /Applications/, /System/, /usr/bin/, /usr/lib/systemd/
• Databases: postgres, redis, mongo, mysql
• Process managers: pm2, Docker, systemd, supervisord
• Terminal multiplexers: tmux, screen
• Editors: vim, nvim, emacs, VS Code helpers
• Login shells, SSH/GPG agents
• Your own process tree (reap never kills itself or ancestors)

Dev Tools Detected

JS/TS: next dev, vite, vitest, jest, tsc --watch, webpack serve, nodemon, storybook, expo start, remix dev, astro dev, nuxt dev, parcel, concurrently, tsx watch, turbo dev

Package managers: npm/pnpm/yarn/bun run (dev|test|start|serve|watch)

Rust: cargo watch, cargo test

Python: pytest, uvicorn, flask run, manage.py runserver

Go: go test, go run, air

Browsers: chrome-headless-shell, puppeteer, playwright

Safety

1. Never kills self or any ancestor process
2. Never kills root-owned or system-user processes
3. Never kills processes under system paths
4. SIGTERM first, waits 5 seconds, SIGKILL only if still alive
5. Kills process trees: parent first, then surviving children

Platform Support

• macOS -- fully tested
• Linux -- supported (protected paths and patterns for systemd, snap, etc.)

License

MIT