An agent session can end before its processes do

My Mac’s fans were running, which doesn’t usually happen. Coding agents were working in a few projects at the time, so they were the obvious suspect.

They weren’t the load. The agent apps were using 1 to 3 percent CPU. Five yes processes were using about 80 percent each and had been running for two and a half hours. Their parent was launchd, so nothing owned them anymore, and their working directory showed which repository they came from.

I asked the agent working in that repository. According to it, an earlier session had started them to put the machine under load while chasing unstable tests, and the command to stop them didn’t work in that environment. It stopped all five.

An agent session ending doesn’t mean the processes it started have ended.