kill any process occupying a port. unix-first, zero-zombie, one command.

npx cli-killport 3000

---

what it does

1. finds every process bound to the given port (lsof, fuser, ss)
2. shows you what it found — pid, name, user, command, state, children
3. kills the entire process tree bottom-up (children first, parent last)
4. sends SIGTERM → brief grace → SIGKILL (-9) → kills process group
5. reaps zombie children by signaling parent processes
6. verifies the port is actually free before exiting

install

# use directly with npx (no install needed)
npx cli-killport 1420

# or install globally
npm i -g cli-killport
killport 1420

# short alias
kp 1420

usage

killport <port> [options]

options

flag	description
-h, --help	show help
-v, --version	show version
-s, --silent	suppress banner and verbose output

examples

killport 1420          # kill whatever is on port 1420
killport 3000          # free up port 3000
kp 5173                # short alias
npx cli-killport 8080  # no install needed

platforms

• macOS — first-class support via lsof
• Linux — lsof → fuser → ss fallback chain

why

because lsof -i :1420 | awk '{print $2}' | tail -1 | xargs kill -9 is not a real workflow. and it leaves zombie children behind.

license

MIT