detecting-port-conflicts

detecting-port-conflicts is a skill for Claude Code from spencerpauly/awesome-cursor-skills. It costs 34 tokens per session (450 once invoked), scanned A, original, CC0-1.0.

A procedure for diagnosing a port conflict, which happens when another program is already using the network address a development server needs. It finds the program using the port and offers ways to stop it or choose another port.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it after errors such as EADDRINUSE or “address already in use” to identify the blocking process, stop it when appropriate, or configure a different port for frameworks such as Vite, Next.js, Express, or Django.
Why use it?
It removes a common reason a local development server will not start. It helps distinguish an abandoned server from another project, a container, or a system service.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: user-invocable in frontmatter.

Good fit Use it after errors such as EADDRINUSE or “address already in use” to identify the blocking process, stop it when appropriate, or configure a different port for frameworks such as Vite, Next.js, Express, or Django.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/spencerpauly/awesome-cursor-skills/detecting-port-conflicts
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add spencerpauly/awesome-cursor-skills --skill detecting-port-conflicts
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/spencerpauly/awesome-cursor-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for detecting-port-conflicts

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/spencerpauly/awesome-cursor-skills/detecting-port-conflicts/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/spencerpauly/awesome-cursor-skills/detecting-port-conflicts)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/spencerpauly/awesome-cursor-skills/detecting-port-conflicts"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/spencerpauly/awesome-cursor-skills/detecting-port-conflicts/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for detecting-port-conflicts

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/spencerpauly/awesome-cursor-skills/detecting-port-conflicts"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/spencerpauly/awesome-cursor-skills/detecting-port-conflicts.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 34 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 450 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00034 $0.00450
Opus 5 $0.00017 $0.00225
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00090
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00045

Measured 12d ago against content hash 34a1104759ce, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

detecting-port-conflicts scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 12d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

resources/detecting-port-conflicts/SKILL.md · 76 lines

What it actually says

Detecting Port Conflicts

When a dev server fails to start because a port is already in use, diagnose and resolve it.

Detection

Scan terminal output for these patterns:

  • EADDRINUSE
  • address already in use
  • Port XXXX is already in use
  • bind: address already in use
  • OSError: [Errno 98] Address already in use

Extract the port number from the error message.

Diagnosis

Find what's using the port:

lsof -i :<PORT> -P -n

This shows the PID, process name, and user. Common culprits:

  • A previous dev server that didn't shut down cleanly
  • Another project's dev server
  • A Docker container
  • A system service

Resolution Options

Option 1: Kill the blocking process

kill <PID>
# If it doesn't stop:
kill -9 <PID>

Then restart the original server.

Option 2: Use a different port

Suggest the next available port:

# Check if port+1 is free
lsof -i :<PORT+1> -P -n

Update the dev server config or start command:

  • Next.js: next dev -p <PORT>
  • Vite: vite --port <PORT>
  • Express: set PORT env var
  • Django: python manage.py runserver <PORT>

Option 3: Kill all node processes (nuclear option)

killall node

Only suggest this if the user confirms — it kills everything.

Tips

  • On macOS, ports below 1024 require root
  • Docker containers bind ports that persist even if the container is stopped — check docker ps
  • If lsof shows nothing, the port may be in TIME_WAIT state — just wait 30 seconds or use a different port
Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 12d ago First seen · 76 lines · 34 tokens per session scan A 34a1104759ce

Subscribe to this mod's changes

detecting-port-conflicts is a skill published in the GitHub repository spencerpauly/awesome-cursor-skills (770 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed CC0-1.0. It adds 34 tokens to every session and 450 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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