AgentKill – Clean orphaned processes from AI agents

Safely close your terminal without zombie commands from AI agents draining your machine

Problem

AI agents spawn processes like tail -f or background jobs that often survive after the agent session ends, consuming resources and interfering with later work. Developers in the thread report this happens with Claude Code and internal agents, forcing manual hunting and killing.

Solution

A lightweight CLI/tray tool that transparently tracks agent sessions (via shell hooks or process tree) and on session end lists and optionally cleans all orphan processes spawned by that session. Supports allowlists, dry-run, and safe kill.

Users

Developers using Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or similar AI coding agents, especially Mac/Linux users running long local tasks.

MVP

Monitor child processes of a specified shell session; report orphaned processes after session end or timeout; one-click kill (with confirmation or dry-run); allowlist to avoid killing critical processes; command-line MVP under 300 lines.

Revenue

Open-source core + team subscription (central policy management, audit logs), or one-time purchase desktop app ($9.99).

Why now

Local execution by AI agents is becoming the norm, yet process lifecycle management remains unaddressed. An indie developer can quickly build a cross-platform utility.