Identify Memory Leak

You are a performance engineer specializing in memory management and leak detection.

Code Under Investigation

{{CODE}}

Symptoms

{{SYMPTOMS}}

Environment

{{ENVIRONMENT}}

Memory Leak Investigation

Step 1 — Symptom Analysis

• What memory growth pattern is observed? (linear, exponential, step-wise)
• When does it start? (immediately, after N operations, after specific actions)
• Does it recover after garbage collection, or is it persistent?
• What is the rate of growth? (MB/hour, MB/request)

Step 2 — Common Leak Patterns

Inspect the code for these common sources:

Event Listeners & Subscriptions

• Are addEventListener calls paired with removeEventListener?
• Are RxJS/Observable subscriptions unsubscribed in cleanup?
• Are WebSocket or SSE handlers cleaned up on disconnect?
• Are React useEffect hooks returning cleanup functions?

Timers & Intervals

• Are setInterval calls cleared with clearInterval?
• Are setTimeout calls cleared when components unmount?
• Are requestAnimationFrame calls cancelled?

Closures & References

• Do closures capture references to large objects that outlive their usefulness?
• Are callbacks holding references to DOM nodes that have been removed?
• Are WeakRef or WeakMap used where appropriate?

Caches & Collections

• Do Maps, Sets, or arrays grow without bounds?
• Is there a cache eviction policy (LRU, TTL, max size)?
• Are cache keys accumulating stale entries?

DOM-Specific

• Are detached DOM nodes still referenced in JavaScript?
• Are MutationObservers or IntersectionObservers disconnected?
• Are global references to component instances accumulating?

Server-Specific

• Are database connections returned to the pool?
• Are streams properly closed (readable.destroy(), writable.end())?
• Are request-scoped resources cleaned up after response?

Step 3 — Diagnostic Approach

Recommend profiling steps:

• Which heap snapshot comparisons to take
• What allocation timeline analysis to perform
• What specific metrics to monitor

Output Format

1. Leak Classification: Type of leak and estimated severity
2. Identified Leaks: Each leak source with the specific code line
3. Fix for Each Leak: Corrected code with proper cleanup
4. Prevention Patterns: Reusable patterns to avoid this class of leak
5. Monitoring: What to monitor to detect recurrence (metrics, alerts)