esbuild "The service was stopped" - Fix Crashes in CI

esbuild runs as a long-lived child process that the JS API talks to. "The service was stopped" means that process exited unexpectedly - killed by the OOM killer, terminated by the runner, or crashed from a version mismatch.

What this error means

A build using esbuild (directly, or via Vite/tsup/Vitest) fails with Error: The service was stopped. It can be intermittent when caused by memory pressure on a busy runner, or consistent when it is a version/binary problem.

build output

Error: The service was stopped
    at /app/node_modules/esbuild/lib/main.js:1381:29
    at Socket.<anonymous> (/app/node_modules/esbuild/lib/main.js:678:9)

Common causes

The esbuild process was OOM-killed

On a memory-constrained runner the kernel can kill the esbuild child, and the JS side then reports the service stopped. This overlaps with build OOM.

Node/esbuild version or binary mismatch

A mismatched esbuild JS package and native binary, or running under an unsupported Node, can make the service crash on startup or mid-build.

How to fix it

Reduce memory pressure

Run the build on a larger runner or lower concurrency so the esbuild process is not OOM-killed.
Check dmesg/runner logs for an OOM kill that coincides with the stop.
Limit parallel esbuild-driven tasks (e.g. test sharding) that compete for RAM.

Reinstall to fix a version/binary mismatch

Make sure the esbuild package and its platform binary match and match your Node.

Terminal

rm -rf node_modules package-lock.json
npm install
node -p "require('esbuild').version"

How to prevent it

Size the build runner so esbuild is not killed under memory pressure.
Reinstall from a clean lockfile so the esbuild binary matches the package.
Run on a Node version esbuild supports.