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common/claude/memory/-home-connor/pattern-kill-matches-wrong-process.md

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+---
+name: pattern-kill-matches-wrong-process
+description: pkill/pgrep/kill %n by pattern repeatedly hit the wrong process or missed the right one; capture PIDs instead
+metadata:
+  type: feedback
+---
+
+**Do not manage processes by pattern.** Capture the PID when starting
+something and act on that PID. `pgrep -f`, `pkill -f` and `kill %n` have gone
+wrong repeatedly across sessions, in every direction:
+
+- `pgrep -f "podman image prune"` matched the monitor's own command line, so
+  it waited forever on itself. Connor: "I really don't understand why it's
+  taking this long."
+- `pgrep -f "llmbench.cli run"` matched his `tmux new -As llmbench` session
+  and reported a runner that had finished hours earlier. Eight hours of idle
+  GPU followed, because the benchmark was reported as running when it was not.
+- `hf download ... | head -5 & ... kill %1` killed the shell job but not the
+  `hf` child, which kept pulling the WHOLE repo -- 69 GB into
+  `~/.cache/huggingface` before it was spotted in a process listing.
+- `pkill -f "llama-server.*9199"` killed the shell that was running the
+  heredoc writing the next script, so the script silently never existed.
+
+**Why:** a pattern matches the literal command line of EVERY process,
+including the shell running the command that contains the pattern, monitors
+built from it, tmux sessions named after the project, and editors with the
+path open. It also does not follow pipelines or reach children a job-control
+kill does not own.
+
+**How to apply:** save `$!` (or the pid from `ps`) and kill that. Where a
+pattern is unavoidable, exclude self (`grep -v $$`), print what matched before
+killing it, and VERIFY afterwards with `ps -p <pid>` rather than assuming the
+kill worked -- several of these failures were "I killed it" followed by the
+process still running. To check whether work finished, prefer the durable
+record (a run's `ended_at` in the database) over process presence.