Kill Process MCP server for AI agents

Kill-Process-MCP is a cross-platform Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that allows you to list and kill operating system processes through natural language queries. It's perfect when you need to identify and terminate resource-hogging processes without remembering complex terminal commands.

Requirements

MCP-compatible LLM client (like Claude Desktop)
macOS, Windows, or Linux
Python 3.13 or higher
uv package manager
Required libraries: mcp, psutil

Installation

1. Clone the repository and install dependencies

First, clone the repository and navigate to the project directory:

git clone https://github.com/misiektoja/kill-process-mcp.git
cd kill-process-mcp

If you don't have uv installed yet:

pip install uv

# or on macOS: 
brew install uv

Then install the required dependencies:

uv sync

2. Configure your MCP client

You need to register the kill-process-mcp as an MCP server in your compatible client.

For Claude Desktop, add the following to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers":
    {
        "kill-process-mcp":
        {
            "command": "uv",
            "args":
            [
                "run",
                "--directory",
                "/path/to/kill-process-mcp",
                "kill_process_mcp.py"
            ],
            "type": "stdio"
        }
    }
}

The default location for the Claude Desktop configuration file is:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

Remember to replace /path/to/kill-process-mcp with the actual path to where you cloned the repository. On Windows, escape backslashes (e.g., C:\\path\\to\\kill-process-mcp).

After configuration, restart your LLM client. In Claude Desktop, you can verify the server installation by going to Profile → Settings → Integrations.

Using Kill-Process-MCP

The server provides two main tools:

Available Tools

process_list: Lists running processes sorted by CPU or memory usage, with filtering options
process_kill: Terminates selected processes

Example Prompts

Here are some natural language queries you can use with your MCP-compatible AI assistant:

"Kill the damn process slowing down my system!"
"Check my top 5 CPU parasites and flag any that look like malware"
"List the 3 greediest processes by RAM usage"
"Exterminate every process with Spotify in its name"
"List Alice's Python processes, max 10 entries"
"Which processes are over 2% CPU and 100 MB RAM"

The AI will interpret these requests, use the appropriate MCP tools, and handle the process listing or termination for you.

Caution

Use this tool with care, especially when killing processes. Terminating essential system processes could cause instability or data loss. The server will attempt to identify system processes, but always review before confirming any termination actions.

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "kill-process-mcp" '{"command":"uv","args":["run","--directory","/path/to/kill-process-mcp","kill_process_mcp.py"],"type":"stdio"}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "kill-process-mcp": {
            "command": "uv",
            "args": [
                "run",
                "--directory",
                "/path/to/kill-process-mcp",
                "kill_process_mcp.py"
            ],
            "type": "stdio"
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "kill-process-mcp": {
            "command": "uv",
            "args": [
                "run",
                "--directory",
                "/path/to/kill-process-mcp",
                "kill_process_mcp.py"
            ],
            "type": "stdio"
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect