👻 Ghost-Buster

A colorful, interactive Node.js CLI tool to hunt down and terminate rogue background processes holding your local ports hostage.

🚀 The Problem

Ever tried to start a local development server only to get Error: Port 3000 is already in use? Ghost-Buster automates the annoying process of finding the hidden Process ID (PID) and killing it, now with a safety-first interactive confirmation.

✨ Features

• Interactive Confirmation: Never kill a process by accident. Ghost-Buster asks for permission before firing.
• Port Ranges: Scan and bust multiple ghosts at once (e.g., ghost 3000-3010).
• Ghost List: See everything running with ghost --list.
• Watch Mode: Persistently monitor a port and auto-terminate any intruder with --watch.
• Alias Detection: Automatically identifies if a process is a Node.js app, Docker container, or Python script.
• Graceful Termination: First attempts a polite SIGTERM to let processes save state, automatically falling back to kill -9 only if the "ghost" persists.
• Automation Friendly: Skip prompts using the -f (force) flag for CI/CD or scripts.
• Beautiful Terminal UI: Color-coded output using picocolors.

📦 Installation

Install Ghost-Buster globally via npm:

npm install -g flyingant-ghost-buster

🚀 Usage

Basic Hunt

ghost 3000

Range Scan

ghost 3000-3010

List All Active Ports

ghost --list

Automation (Force Bust)

ghost 8080 -f

Watch & Guard a Port

Keep a port free permanently (checks every 2 seconds):

ghost 3000 --watch -f