🧹 sweep 

Find and kill forgotten dev processes.

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You open Activity Monitor and see 47 node processes, a handful of TypeScript compilers, some Docker containers, and no idea what any of them belong to. Sweep fixes that.

It scans your system for developer processes, groups them by project, shows you exactly what's eating your CPU and memory, and lets you kill them - individually or by the project-load.

Install

Homebrew

brew install skyfriends/tap/sweep

Go

go install github.com/skyfriends/sweep@latest

Binary

Download from releases and put it on your PATH.

From source

git clone https://github.com/skyfriends/sweep.git
cd sweep
make install

Quick start

sweep       # launch the interactive TUI

That's it. Sweep scans your running processes, identifies the developer-related ones, groups them by project directory, and drops you into an interactive view.

What it finds

Sweep recognizes ~50 common developer tools and runtimes:

Category	Examples
Node ecosystem	node, tsx, ts-node, next, vite, webpack, esbuild, turbo, nodemon
TypeScript	tsc, tsserver, typescript-language-server
Package managers	pnpm, npm, yarn, bun
Bundlers	webpack, esbuild, swc, rollup, parcel, turbopack
Test runners	jest, vitest, playwright, cypress
Dev servers	next dev, vite, webpack-dev-server, remix dev, astro dev
LSP / Editor	tsserver, eslint_d, copilot
Docker	containers with CPU/memory stats
Other runtimes	go, python, ruby, java

TUI controls

Key	Action
j / k	Navigate up / down
Enter / Space	Expand / collapse a group
x	Kill the selected process
K	Kill an entire group
r	Refresh the scan
q	Quit

Grouping

Sweep figures out which project each process belongs to by looking at its working directory and walking up the tree until it finds a project marker (package.json, go.mod, Cargo.toml, pyproject.toml, etc.). Processes that can't be mapped to a project show up in an Orphaned group.

Groups are sorted by memory usage, heaviest first, so the worst offenders are always at the top.

MCP server

Sweep includes a built-in Model Context Protocol server, so AI assistants like Claude can monitor and manage your dev processes.

sweep --mcp     # start as an MCP server (stdio transport)

Add to your Claude Code config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sweep": {
      "command": "sweep",
      "args": ["--mcp"]
    }
  }
}

MCP tools

Tool	Description
sweep_scan	Full process scan with optional group filter
sweep_status	Quick health check - totals, warnings, pressure assessment
sweep_kill	Kill a process by PID (SIGTERM or SIGKILL)
sweep_kill_group	Kill all processes in a project group
sweep_kill_orphans	Kill all orphaned processes
sweep_docker	List, stop, or remove Docker containers
sweep_recommendations	Prioritized cleanup suggestions

The sweep_recommendations tool is particularly useful for AI workflows - it analyzes everything running on the system and returns actionable, prioritized suggestions like:

[HIGH] template-v2 is using 1.4 GB of memory across 12 processes
  -> Run: sweep_kill_group group="template-v2"

[MEDIUM] 3 node processes idle (< 1% CPU) but consuming 380 MB
  -> Consider killing PIDs: 1234, 1235, 1236

[LOW] 2 stopped Docker containers taking up space
  -> Run: sweep_docker action="remove" container="old-postgres"

How it works

• Process discovery via gopsutil - cross-platform process enumeration with CPU, memory, and working directory
• Smart identification - cmdline parsing to distinguish a Next.js dev server from a generic node process
• Project grouping - cwd-based tree walk with result caching for fast repeated scans
• Docker awareness - shells out to docker ps and docker stats for container info
• Resource color coding - green/yellow/red thresholds so you can spot problems at a glance

License

MIT