opencode-release-on-quit

An OpenCode TUI plugin that shuts down what a project keeps running after you leave: when you quit a window it releases that project's cached services (MCP, LSP), and when the last OpenCode client exits it sweeps every loaded location — so no MCP processes stay alive overnight.

Community plugin. Not built by, endorsed by, or affiliated with the OpenCode team.

Why

OpenCode v2 keeps per-project MCP servers and LSPs warm inside its shared background service. Closing a session with /exit only closes the client: the project's cached services are not released at that point — they wait for an inactivity timer (the location layer currently uses a 60-minute idle TTL) or for a capacity/dispose mechanism, regardless of whether any client still has that project open. Over a day of opening several projects this can add up to gigabytes of processes you are no longer using.

This plugin makes /exit mean what you thought it meant: the project you leave is released once its client is gone, and when the last client exits nothing stays behind.

How it works

1. When a TUI exits, the plugin spawns a small detached helper (evict-deferred.mjs).
2. The helper waits until the TUI process is really gone — a dying client's last data syncs can undo an immediate release.
3. It then disposes the cached services of that window's project via the server's location eviction API.
4. If no other OpenCode client is running, it sweeps every loaded location.

Locations with a turn executing are never touched. Everything boots lazily again the next time you use it.

Requirements

• OpenCode >= 2.0.0
• macOS or Linux (the helper uses ps to detect the last client)
• Node.js available in PATH (the deferred helper runs on it)

Install

Add it to your CLI configuration (~/.config/opencode/cli.json):

{
  "plugins": ["opencode-release-on-quit"]
}

Or from the CLI:

opencode plugin add opencode-release-on-quit

Activity log

The helper appends a small log to ~/.local/share/opencode/release-on-quit.log:

2026-10-02T23:27:26.136Z start ppid=1 dirs=1
2026-10-02T23:27:26.204Z parent already gone at start
2026-10-02T23:27:27.800Z no other clients; sweeping all loaded locations
2026-10-02T23:27:27.900Z evicted: /Users/me/projects/app
2026-10-02T23:27:27.901Z done

Compatibility

• Uses the server's experimental debug.location.evict endpoint. If a future OpenCode release removes or changes it, the helper logs the failure and nothing else happens — it fails soft. Known quirks of that endpoint are tracked upstream (for example, anomalyco/opencode#51198).
• While other OpenCode clients stay open, a released location can be revived on demand by them. That is expected: the plugin never fights a live client.

Upstream

The permanent fix belongs in the service, not in a client plugin:

• anomalyco/opencode#53068 — feature request to release a project's cached services when its last client exits. This plugin is cited there as prior art; if it helps you, your experience in that thread is useful evidence.
• anomalyco/opencode#52946 — in-flight core work that caps the per-directory MCP instance cache (LRU).

Development

The package ships TypeScript source (src/); OpenCode's plugin runtime loads it directly.

npm install
npm run typecheck
npm run check:helper

To test locally through the plugin discovery directory, create a bridge at ~/.config/opencode/plugins/release-on-quit/tui.ts:

export { default } from "/absolute/path/to/opencode-release-on-quit/src/tui.ts"

Remove the bridge before switching to the published package, so the plugin does not load twice.

License

MIT