Graceful Shutdown Skill

Graceful Shutdown

Overview
When to Use
Quick Start
Reference Guides
Best Practices

Overview

Implement proper shutdown procedures to ensure all requests are completed, connections are closed, and resources are released before process termination.

When to Use

Kubernetes/Docker deployments
Rolling updates and deployments
Server restarts
Load balancer drain periods
Zero-downtime deployments
Process managers (PM2, systemd)
Long-running background jobs
Database connection cleanup

Quick Start

Minimal working example:

import express from "express";
import http from "http";

class GracefulShutdownServer {
  private app: express.Application;
  private server: http.Server;
  private isShuttingDown = false;
  private activeConnections = new Set<any>();
  private shutdownTimeout = 30000; // 30 seconds

  constructor() {
    this.app = express();
    this.server = http.createServer(this.app);
    this.setupMiddleware();
    this.setupRoutes();
    this.setupShutdownHandlers();
  }

  private setupMiddleware(): void {
    // Track active connections
    this.app.use((req, res, next) => {
      if (this.isShuttingDown) {
        res.set("Connection", "close");
        return res.status(503).json({
          error: "Server is shutting down",
// ... (see reference guides for full implementation)

Reference Guides

Detailed implementations in the references/ directory:

| Guide | Contents | |---|---| | Express.js Graceful Shutdown | Express.js Graceful Shutdown | | Kubernetes-Aware Shutdown | Kubernetes-Aware Shutdown | | Worker Process Shutdown | Worker Process Shutdown | | Database Connection Pool Shutdown | Database Connection Pool Shutdown | | PM2 Graceful Shutdown | PM2 Graceful Shutdown | | Python/Flask Graceful Shutdown | Python/Flask Graceful Shutdown |

Best Practices

✅ DO

Handle SIGTERM and SIGINT signals
Stop accepting new requests immediately
Wait for in-flight requests to complete
Set reasonable shutdown timeouts
Close database connections properly
Flush logs and metrics
Fail health checks during shutdown
Test shutdown procedures
Log shutdown progress
Use graceful shutdown in containers

❌ DON'T

Ignore shutdown signals
Force kill processes without cleanup
Set unreasonably long timeouts
Skip resource cleanup
Forget to close connections
Block shutdown indefinitely

Agent Skills: Graceful Shutdown

Install this agent skill to your local

Skill Files