process-hunter_skill

Overview

This skill is a command-line process hunter that identifies and optionally terminates resource-hungry processes to free CPU, memory, and battery. It runs safe heuristics to automatically kill known problematic services and prompts for confirmation before terminating unfamiliar processes. The skill also measures power/energy impact before and after a hunt and produces a concise victory report.

How this skill works

The skill uses scripts to measure power usage, scan processes against CPU and memory thresholds, and classify results into 'bonk now' (safe to kill) or 'ask first' (unknown). Termination uses a gentle SIGTERM first and an optional forced SIGKILL when needed. After any bonk, it generates a summary report showing processes terminated, memory reclaimed, and power impact.

When to use it

• Free up CPU on overloaded development servers
• Reduce memory pressure to avoid out-of-memory issues
• Save battery on laptops by killing background build/watch processes
• Clean up runaway dev tools (Next.js, Webpack, Vite, etc.)
• Before shipping or testing when a clean environment is required

Best practices

• Run measure_power.py before a hunt to capture baseline metrics
• Use conservative thresholds and review the 'ask first' list before bonking unknown processes
• Prefer graceful termination (no --force) and escalate only if processes do not exit
• Always run the victory report to record how many processes were terminated and resources freed
• Add or remove known-safe bonk targets to match your environment

Example use cases

• Developer laptop slows during hot recompile: run the hunter to kill runaway watchers and reporters
• CI worker exhausted memory: scan and bonk nonessential build tools to complete jobs
• Battery drain during local testing: measure, hunt, and report to verify battery improvements
• Automated cleanup on long-lived staging hosts to remove stale dev servers and free resources