Port Authority

A small local daemon that hands out ports on request instead of every project guessing or scanning for a free one. One project asks "give me a port for web," another asks for api, and Port Authority makes sure they never collide — including with things it didn't allocate (Docker containers, stray processes, anything already bound).

Features

• Centralized allocation: one registry instead of every project picking its own port
• Real availability checks: before handing out a port, the daemon actually tries to bind it — not just "not in my registry"
• Token auth: the daemon generates a local secret on first start; the CLI/library read it automatically — no plaintext-anyone-on-the-box access
• Stale-allocation cleanup: a background sweep reclaims ports whose owner crashed and never released them, after a configurable grace period — plus port gc to preview or force it on demand
• Pool management: configurable ranges per category (web, api, database, ...)
• Known services: port myproject postgres tries port 5432 first (falling back to the normal pool scan if it's taken) — covers common databases, caches, and brokers out of the box, extendable via config
• REST API: plain HTTP on 127.0.0.1:8888
• CLI + Python library: use from shell scripts or import directly
• Persistent state: allocations survive daemon restarts (~/.local/share/port-authority/allocations.json)
• Agent-friendly: ships a Claude Code skill + CLAUDE.md snippet (no extra dependencies) and a real MCP server (optional dependency) so any MCP-compatible agent — not just Claude Code — can call it as a native tool
• Cross-platform auto-start: systemd user service on Linux, launchd agent on macOS, both installed and started by install.sh; CI runs the full suite on both ubuntu-latest and macos-latest

Quick Start

Installation

git clone https://github.com/tyy130/port-authority.git
cd port-authority
./install.sh

install.sh installs the Python deps, symlinks the CLI into ~/.local/bin, writes a default config, and installs + starts the daemon as a background service — a systemd user unit on Linux, a launchd agent on macOS. Falls back to printing manual-start instructions if neither is available.

Make sure ~/.local/bin is on your PATH.

Prefer pip? pip install portauth gets you the CLI and library (published as portauth — see why), but you're on your own for starting the daemon (port-authority-daemon &) and keeping it running, since install.sh is what wires up the systemd/launchd service.

Usage

# Friendly wrapper — request a port
port myproject myservice
# -> 3005

# Same thing via the full CLI
port-request request myproject myservice --pool web

# Release it when the service stops
port-request release myproject myservice

# See everything currently allocated (with live active/inactive status)
port status
port-request status --project myproject

# Preview allocations that would be reclaimed as stale, or force it now
port gc
port gc --force

Project and service names must match [A-Za-z0-9_-]+ — no colons or slashes, since names get embedded in the registry key.

Configuration

Edit ~/.config/port-authority/config.yaml:

pools:
  web:
    range: [3000, 4000]
    description: "Web services, APIs"
  database:
    range: [5000, 6000]
    description: "Database ports"
  internal:
    range: [8000, 9000]
    description: "Internal services"

default_pool: web

# How long a port can sit allocated-but-unbound before the background
# sweep (and `port gc --force`) reclaim it.
stale_after_minutes: 60

# Extend or override the built-in known-service ports (postgres, redis,
# mysql, mongodb, and a couple dozen other common dev services -- see
# DEFAULT_KNOWN_SERVICES in port_authority/daemon.py for the full list).
# Requesting a port for one of these names tries the given port first,
# falling back to normal pool scanning if it's taken.
known_services:
  postgres: 5432 # overrides the built-in default
  my-internal-tool: 7777 # adds a new one

Changes require restarting the daemon (systemctl --user restart port-authority on Linux, launchctl kickstart -k gui/$(id -u)/com.portauthority.daemon on macOS).

Integration

Bash

PORT=$(port myproject myservice)
echo "Starting on port $PORT"

Python

from port_authority import request_port, release_port

port = request_port("myproject", "myservice")
print(f"Running on port {port}")

# When done:
release_port("myproject", "myservice")

Claude Code / Agents

Copy .claude/CLAUDE.md from this repo into your project (or @-reference it) so agents working in that codebase default to requesting a port instead of hardcoding 3000. See INTEGRATION.md for the full setup, including an optional pre-commit hook that flags hardcoded ports in diffs.

MCP server (any MCP client)

The .claude/ convention above only means anything to Claude Code — it's a file another tool has no reason to look at. For every other MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, other agent frameworks), Port Authority also ships as a real MCP server exposing request_port, release_port, port_status, and port_gc as native tools, over the standard stdio transport.

This is an optional dependency (requires Python 3.10+; the base install works on 3.9+ and stays stdlib-only otherwise):

pip install -r requirements-mcp.txt   # or: pip install "portauth[mcp]"

Register it with any MCP client by pointing at the script (adjust the path to your clone):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "port-authority": {
      "command": "python3",
      "args": ["/path/to/port-authority/port_authority/mcp_server.py"]
    }
  }
}

The tools call the exact same HTTP client the CLI uses (port_authority.request_port etc.) — same auth, same error messages, same behavior, just exposed over MCP instead of the command line.

Architecture

• Daemon: port-authority-daemon — a single-threaded http.server on 127.0.0.1:8888 (not exposed beyond localhost), plus a background thread that sweeps for stale allocations every 60s
• Auth: a random token minted on first daemon start, stored at ~/.config/port-authority/token (0600), required as a Bearer token on every request
• State: ~/.local/share/port-authority/allocations.json
• CLI: port (friendly wrapper) / port-request (full subcommands: request, release, status, gc)
• MCP server: port_authority/mcp_server.py (port-authority-mcp once installed) — optional, thin adapter over the same client the CLI uses

How allocation ownership works

The registry is the source of truth for who owns a port, not whether it's currently bound. A healthy running service IS bound to its port — that's expected, not a conflict. So:

• Looking up an existing allocation (port myproject myservice called again) always returns the same port, regardless of whether it's currently active or idle.
• Picking a brand-new port for a key that isn't in the registry tries the service's canonical port first if it's a known one (see Configuration), then skips anything currently bound — whether Port Authority knows about it or not — while scanning the pool range.
• Reclaiming an abandoned allocation (owner crashed, never called release) only happens after the port has been continuously free for stale_after_minutes — a service that just hasn't started yet is never mistaken for a dead one.

Known limitations

• Single machine. There's no clustering or shared state across hosts — each machine runs its own daemon and registry.
• Trust model is "anyone who can read your dotfiles." The token is a local secret file, not real per-caller identity — it stops a stray unprivileged process from guessing its way in, not a determined actor already on your account.

License

MIT