DevPilot Puts a Kill Switch for Orphaned Dev Ports in Your Mac Menu Bar

AI coding agents accelerate project starts but are terrible at cleanup, leaving bound ports that block subsequent runs. A menu bar utility that identifies the owning project and kills the process in one click removes a persistent friction that `lsof` workflows never solved.

AI coding agents routinely leave behind running dev servers on ports like 3000, 5173, and 8080 long after the terminal window closes. DevPilot, a new open-source macOS utility, lives in the menu bar and lists every listening port alongside its process name, PID, user, parent process, and project path. It filters out system noise by separating project services — Vite, Next.js, Node, Go, Python backends — from the full port table.

Right-clicking any entry kills the process immediately, replacing the manual `lsof -i :PORT` and `kill -9` loop. The project-path column answers the most common question when a port is mysteriously occupied: which repo actually started this. Installation is a single Homebrew cask command or a DMG download from GitHub Releases.

The tool targets a workflow pain point that got worse as vibe-coding and multi-agent setups became common. When an agent spins up a service and the task ends without cleanup, the port stays bound and blocks the next run. DevPilot makes that state visible and reversible from the menu bar without switching contexts.

The tool's thoroughness surprised people — it surfaced ports from long-forgotten projects, which was taken as proof of quality. A clear demand exists for a Windows version, and the author confirmed one is planned. The rest of the thread is straightforward gratitude and encouragement.