Pkll, a CLI tool that shows what's on a port before killing it

Name: Pkll, a CLI tool that shows what's on a port before killing it
Availability: InStock
Author: yofabr

by yofabr·Apr 14, 2026·1 point·0 comments

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AI Analysis

●●SolidSolve My ProblemCozy

Cross-platform port killer with safety warnings when fuser and lsof already exist.

Strengths

•Windows support is genuinely rare for port-killing tools, most are Unix-only
•System process warnings prevent accidental kills of critical services
•Single binary with no runtime dependencies means zero installation friction

Weaknesses

•Wraps existing lsof/netstat + kill functionality without novel technique
•No batch mode or scripting support for CI/CD automation workflows

Post Description

Every time I hit "address already in use" I'd run `lsof -i :3000`, grep for the PID, then kill -9 it. Three commands, every single time.

So I wrote `pkll`, one command that does all of it, but asks for confirmation with all info about the process, and warns if it is important system process first.

You run `pkll [PORT]`, then it shows all the essential info about the process. Then after confirmation the process is killed.

This became especially annoying with coding agents. They just spin up dev servers, then leave bun instances and other processes sitting silently in the background. You go to start your server and something invisible is already holding the port. I built this to keep it dead simple: one thing, one command, works the same on Linux, macOS, and Windows. No config, no flags to memorize making it deadly simple.

Also I wrote it while learning Rust, so feedback on the code is very welcome.