{"slug": "show-hn-baa-find-and-free-what-your-ai-agents-left-running-on-your-mac", "title": "Show HN: Baa – find and free what your AI agents left running on your Mac", "summary": "A developer released Baa, a free macOS menu-bar utility that detects leftover processes — including things AI agents started and forgot about, idle Ollama models, and Docker instances with no containers — and frees them in one click, installable via Homebrew with a minimum requirement of macOS 14+. Baa flags memory pressure at 15% RAM free (yellow) and 8% (red) by default, adjustable through the `baa warn` command, and also identifies dev junk filling disk space such as old builds and package caches; the developer says it never kills anything on its own and was \"vibecoded\" in 30 minutes.", "body_md": "*a tiny ram for your RAM*\n\ntldr; baa lives in your menu bar, tells you when your mac is about to run out of RAM or disk, finds the stuff quietly eating it, and frees it in one click.\n\nif you like **baa**, i’d love a star ⭐️😄\n\nturns out most of my RAM wasn't going to apps i had open. it was mostly dev servers, builds and agent leftovers i'd forgotten about.\n\n**baa** 🐏 is a little ram that headbutts all of that out of your mac. it plays a tiny baa when it frees something (you can mute this if you hate whimsy though :P)\n\n- lives in your menu bar as 🐏 + how much RAM is free. turns 🟡 / 🟠 / 🔴 when things are getting tight\n- finds stuff you forgot was still running:\n  - 👻 apps and scripts that should've closed but didn't\n  - 🤖 things ai agents started and forgot about\n  - 💤 big stuff just sitting there idle (agent sessions idle for hours, docker with no containers, an ollama model still loaded)\n- tells you how much RAM you'd get back, and frees it in one click\n- pings you a few minutes before you run out\n- also finds dev junk filling up your disk (old builds, package caches etc.) and trashes it in one click\n\n```\nbrew tap selviarora/baa https://github.com/selviarora/baa\nbrew install selviarora/baa/baa\nbrew services start baa\n```\n\nthat builds baa on your mac, starts it in your menu bar (and at every login), and adds the `baa` command. needs macOS 14+.\n\n## or build it yourself\n\nyou'll need xcode command line tools (`xcode-select --install`).\n\n```\ngit clone https://github.com/selviarora/baa && cd baa\n./install.sh\n```\n\nthat builds the app into `~/Applications`, starts it when you log in, and adds the `baa` command.\n\n| `baa` | RAM readout + leftovers, right in your terminal | \n| `baa free <id>` | free one leftover (ids are in the readout) | \n| `baa free all` | free everything it found | \n| `baa disk` | dev junk taking up your disk | \n| `baa disk clean <id>` | clear one (or `all` ) | \n| `baa warn 20 10` | go 🟡 at 20% free and 🔴 at 10% (or tap the sliders icon in the panel) | \n| `baa test` | send a sample notification | \n\nby default baa goes 🟡 at 15% RAM free and 🔴 at 8%. to change that, click 🐏 → the sliders icon at the bottom → set your own. or from the terminal:\n\n```\nbaa warn 20 10   # 🟡 at 20% free, 🔴 at 10%\nbaa warn         # see what it's set to\n```\n\nit'll still go 🔴 if macOS itself says memory is critical.\n\nthe 🟠 \"dropping fast\" heads-up only fires when RAM keeps sliding and you're close to 🟡, not on every app launch. turn it off in the same place, or with `baa warn --no-trend`.\n\nbasically baa looks for stuff that's still running but not doing anything:\n\n- its app or terminal is closed but it's still going\n- an ai agent started it and it's been sitting idle for 15+ min\n- it's big and hasn't used any cpu in a while\n\nit also watches memory pressure (the green / yellow / red graph in activity monitor), not just how much RAM is used. macs use most of their RAM all the time and that's usually ok!\n\nit will also never kill anything on its own.\n\n```\nbrew upgrade baa\n```\n\nor if you built it yourself: `git pull && ./install.sh`\n\nif you used brew:\n\n```\nbrew services stop baa && brew uninstall baa\n```\n\nif you built it yourself:\n\n```\nlaunchctl bootout gui/$(id -u)/com.selvi.baa\nrm -rf ~/Applications/Baa.app ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.selvi.baa.plist ~/.local/bin/baa\n```\n\nvibecoded this in 30 mins so hopefully nothing is broken!", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-baa-find-and-free-what-your-ai-agents-left-running-on-your-mac", "canonical_source": "https://github.com/selviarora/baa", "published_at": "2026-10-17 16:46:48+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-17 17:04:40.200329+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "developer-tools", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["Baa", "macOS", "Homebrew", "Ollama", "Docker", "selviarora"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-baa-find-and-free-what-your-ai-agents-left-running-on-your-mac", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-baa-find-and-free-what-your-ai-agents-left-running-on-your-mac.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-baa-find-and-free-what-your-ai-agents-left-running-on-your-mac.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-baa-find-and-free-what-your-ai-agents-left-running-on-your-mac.jsonld"}}