fixed-port-discipline

To free an occupied local development port, you must identify the active listener process, verify it is a replaceable user-owned process, safely terminate it, and then restart your required service on that same port.

Local services drift to arbitrary alternate ports to avoid conflicts when the documented port is occupied. Enforcing canonical port allocation prevents this by reading repo configuration, resolving the conflict, and restarting the service on the original port.

You can find the canonical port by reading the repository's configuration files, scripts, or documentation. This ensures the service restarts consistently on the one correct port specified by the project.

You can only terminate replaceable local user-owned processes blocking the port. The workflow requires inspecting the active listener to ensure it is safe to kill before freeing the port and restarting your service.

The best way to ensure a consistent restart is to enforce canonical port allocation by reading repo configs, resolving port conflicts by terminating replaceable processes, and verifying the new process is actively listening on the documented port.

Yes, canonical port enforcement applies to local dev, test, preview, API, and tunnel processes. It ensures any service declaring a specific port in repository documentation restarts on that exact port after conflict resolution.