Node.js: Process Lifecycle and Runtime Rules

Claude writes Node services that work in a demo and fall over in production, almost always around the process lifecycle. These are the parts to get right.

Graceful shutdown, done correctly

A server must shut down cleanly on SIGTERM (what docker stop, Swarm, and Kubernetes send) and SIGINT (Ctrl-C). Claude usually omits this entirely, so the orchestrator waits the grace period and then SIGKILLs, dropping in-flight requests. The correct sequence is: stop accepting new connections, drain in-flight ones, close dependencies, exit 0, with a hard timeout so a stuck connection can't block shutdown forever.

const server = app.listen(port);
let shuttingDown = false;

async function shutdown(signal) {
  if (shuttingDown) return;                 // ignore repeat signals
  shuttingDown = true;
  logger.info("shutting down", { signal });

  const force = setTimeout(() => {           // drain hung? force it
    logger.error("shutdown timed out, forcing exit");
    process.exit(1);
  }, 10_000);
  force.unref();

  try {
    await new Promise((r) => server.close(r)); // stop new conns, let in-flight finish
    await db.close();                          // then close DB, redis, change streams
    clearTimeout(force);
    process.exit(0);
  } catch (err) {
    logger.error("error during shutdown", { err });
    process.exit(1);
  }
}

process.on("SIGTERM", () => shutdown("SIGTERM"));
process.on("SIGINT",  () => shutdown("SIGINT"));

Two things that look fine but are bugs: do not put async cleanup in a process.on("exit", ...) handler, the event loop is already stopped so nothing async runs, exit is for synchronous work only. And do not trap SIGUSR1, Node uses it for the debugger. This only works if the process actually receives the signal, which means an exec-form ENTRYPOINT so Node is PID 1 (see the docker skill) and init: true so signals are forwarded (see docker-swarm).

Let it crash, never swallow a fault

On uncaughtException or unhandledRejection the process is in an unknown, possibly corrupt state. Log it and exit non-zero, let the orchestrator restart a clean process. Do not catch-and-continue. Modern Node already terminates on an unhandled rejection by default, so code that relies on swallowing one is both wrong and fragile.

process.on("uncaughtException", (err) => {
  logger.error("uncaught exception", { err });
  process.exit(1);            // exit non-zero so restart_policy: on-failure restarts
});
process.on("unhandledRejection", (reason) => {
  logger.error("unhandled rejection", { reason });
  process.exit(1);
});

The non-zero exit is what makes Swarm/K8s self-healing fire, an exit(0) on a crash reads as success and the dead service is never restarted (see docker-swarm). You can route these through shutdown() to drain first, but never let the process keep serving after one.

Don't block the event loop

Node runs your JavaScript on a single thread. A CPU-bound stretch, parsing a huge payload, hashing, image work, a tight loop over a large array, freezes every concurrent request until it finishes. I/O is already async and is not the problem. For real CPU work, offload to worker_threads, not child_process (for in-process JS) and not "just make it async" (await doesn't yield during a synchronous loop).

const { Worker } = require("node:worker_threads");
new Worker("./workers/process.js", {
  workerData,
  resourceLimits: { maxOldGenerationSizeMb: 512 },  // cap so one worker can't OOM the host
});

Load instrumentation before anything else

APM and tracing libraries (dd-trace, the OpenTelemetry SDK) work by monkey-patching http, express, and your DB driver. They can only patch modules loaded after them, so the init call must be the very first thing in the entry file, before any require("express"). Required late, it silently instruments nothing.

// server.js, line 1
require("dd-trace").init({ /* ... */ });
const express = require("express");   // now traced

Lock down the session cookie

When Claude sets up sessions it usually sets httpOnly and stops. Set all three: httpOnly (no JS access), secure in production (HTTPS only), and sameSite (CSRF defense), which is the one that gets missed.

cookie: { httpOnly: true, secure: isProd, sameSite: "lax", maxAge: 86_400_000 }

Related CORS gotcha: credentials: true cannot be combined with origin: "*", the browser rejects it. Echo a specific allowed origin instead.

Reach for built-ins, replace deprecated packages

Claude's training pulls in libraries that are now deprecated or unnecessary. Prefer the platform:

• crypto.randomUUID() over the uuid package for a v4 id, and uuid over node-uuid
• native fetch (Node 18+) or axios over request (unmaintained since 2020)
• node:test + node:assert for simple suites, structuredClone() over a deep-clone dep
• the Intl APIs or date-fns/Temporal over moment (in maintenance mode)
• @aws-sdk/client-* v3 (modular) over the monolithic aws-sdk v2
• sass (dart-sass) over the deprecated node-sass

Use the node: prefix on built-in imports (require("node:fs")) so there's no ambiguity with a same-named package.

Two smaller ones

• Logging: a structured logger (pino or winston) emitting JSON to stdout in production, never console.log in a hot path. stdout because the container's logging driver collects it (see docker).
• PM2: cluster mode is for using all cores on a VM or bare-metal host. Inside a Swarm or K8s container, run one Node process and scale with replicas plus init: true, don't stack two process managers that both try to own restarts.

This skill is built to grow. Add a rule when a real Node production failure has a stable, defensible fix.