kill-servers

Stale Vite dev or Storybook server processes from prior sessions can keep TCP ports bound and cause flaky connection refused failures during Playwright runs. Terminating these lingering dev server processes frees the ports and resolves the binding contention.

You can free local TCP ports by terminating stale Vite and Storybook dev server processes using pattern-based pkill commands, then escalating with port-targeted SIGKILL if listeners remain on ports 3000, 5173, or 6006.

Yes, idempotent process cleanup commands are designed to succeed even when no dev servers are running, making it safe to execute as a pre-step before every gate check or test workflow without causing errors.

You can verify port availability by checking that no network listeners remain on ports 3000, 5173, and 6006 after running process termination commands, ensuring the key ports used by the local app, Vite dev, and Storybook are clear.

The best way to kill zombie Storybook processes is to use pattern-based pkill commands to terminate known dean-stack processes by command-line pattern, then validate that no listeners remain on port 6006 to ensure complete cleanup.

During local development, a Vite dev server typically binds to port 5173, Storybook uses port 6006, and the local app uses port 3000, which can all experience port-binding contention if stale processes are not cleaned up.