PIDhound

Sniffs out the AI processes you forgot about.

A Mac menu-bar tool for finding and killing stale Claude sessions, MCP servers, Playwright runs, dev servers, and Docker containers — before your fans spin up.

Heavy AI coding sessions kept ending the same way: multiple Claude windows running, MCPs everywhere, Playwright in the background, Docker chugging — and at some point my MacBook fans would scream and the case got hot. I'd ask Claude what to kill, paste the commands back one at a time, things would calm down. Next session, same dance. After enough of that I built a button.

Install

Download the latest DMG from Releases, drag PIDhound to Applications, and launch.

Requirements: macOS 14 Sonoma or later, Apple Silicon (M1 / M2 / M3 / M4).

First launch: the v1.0 DMG is ad-hoc signed but not notarized. On macOS Sonoma, Sequoia, and Tahoe (26), Gatekeeper blocks ad-hoc signed apps on first launch. To clear the block, run this once in Terminal:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/PIDhound.app

Then double-click PIDhound as usual. You only need to run this once per install.

The System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway flow can also work on some systems, but it's unreliable for ad-hoc signed apps — if you tried it and the app still won't open (or shows "damaged"), run the command above.

A Homebrew cask is planned for v1.1.

Why

Modern AI-assisted coding spawns dozens of long-lived processes per workday — Claude sessions, MCP servers (per client, per tool), Playwright runs, dev servers, AI helpers. Many outlive their usefulness. The result: sustained high CPU, hot Mac, loud fans, drained battery.

PIDhound is built for the panic moment: glance at the menu bar, see four stale items eating 1.2 GB, hit one button, fans calm down.

It is not an Activity Monitor replacement. It is opinionated, narrow, and focused on AI/dev workflow hygiene.

Quick tour

Simple Mode (default)

• Always-visible menu bar widget with CPU % and a stale-process counter
• Vitals sidebar: CPU, RAM, thermal pressure, uptime
• Semantic process groups: Claude sessions, MCP servers, AI assistants, Playwright, test runners, dev servers, Docker containers
• One-click batch kills for stale / orphan / zombie items
• Listening Ports tab with kill-by-port
• Minimal history view: 24 h sparkline + kill event log
• Four themes: Modern (default), Terminal Green, Cyberdeck Amber, Neon Cyber

Power User Mode (toggle in Settings — coming in v2.0)

• AI on-demand chat: "What was running when CPU spiked at 14:30?"
• Daily summary digest
• Full thermals via powermetrics: fan RPM, per-core temps, per-process energy
• Multi-day analytics charts
• AI provider: OpenRouter (default) or Anthropic direct

How it differs from Activity Monitor

PIDhound isn't trying to replace Activity Monitor. It's a different shape:

Use Activity Monitor when you want the system-wide picture. Use PIDhound when you want to clean up the AI/dev mess.

How it works

• **Process list

... View full README on GitHub