diff --git a/src/agent_tools/web_tools.py b/src/agent_tools/web_tools.py
index 8c8a98621..6e974c47a 100644
--- a/src/agent_tools/web_tools.py
+++ b/src/agent_tools/web_tools.py
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ import urllib.request
 from pathlib import Path
 from typing import Dict, Any
 
+from core.platform_compat import pid_alive
 from src.constants import MAX_OUTPUT_CHARS
 
 PDF_EXTRACT_MAX_BYTES = 80_000_000
@@ -143,18 +144,23 @@ def _process_command_line(pid: int) -> str | None:
 
 
 def _process_is_alive(pid: int) -> bool:
-    """Whether a pid currently exists. Signal 0 checks without delivering."""
+    """Whether a pid currently exists.
 
-    try:
-        os.kill(pid, 0)
-    except ProcessLookupError:
-        return False
-    except PermissionError:
-        # Alive, owned by somebody else.
-        return True
-    except OSError:
-        return False
-    return True
+    Delegates to ``core.platform_compat.pid_alive`` rather than probing with
+    ``os.kill(pid, 0)`` directly. That probe is POSIX-only: CPython's Windows
+    ``os.kill`` calls ``TerminateProcess(handle, sig)`` for any signal other
+    than CTRL_C / CTRL_BREAK, so it would *kill* the daemon it is asked about.
+    Windows is also where there is no procfs, which is precisely when this
+    function gets called at all.
+
+    ``pid_alive`` reads False for a pid that ``os.kill`` reports with
+    ``PermissionError`` — a live process owned by another user. Neither caller
+    here wants a different answer: the sweep only unlinks a pid file it wrote
+    itself, and treating somebody else's pid as "not our daemon" is the safe
+    reading in both.
+    """
+
+    return pid_alive(pid)
 
 _SCHOLARLY_METADATA_CUE_RE = re.compile(
     r"\b(?:accept(?:ed|ance)?|publish(?:ed|ing|cation)?|venue|conference|"
diff --git a/tests/test_private_browser_tool.py b/tests/test_private_browser_tool.py
index 1e003d4c5..7df8db9fe 100644
--- a/tests/test_private_browser_tool.py
+++ b/tests/test_private_browser_tool.py
@@ -1923,3 +1923,27 @@ def test_procfs_host_still_matches_on_the_command_line(monkeypatch, tmp_path) ->
 
     _pid_file_for(tmp_path, monkeypatch, "clawmm-test", "session-6", 6666)
     assert PrivateBrowserTool._owned_daemon_exists({}, "session-6") is False
+
+
+def test_liveness_probe_goes_through_the_platform_safe_helper(monkeypatch) -> None:
+    """The no-procfs path must not reach a bare ``os.kill(pid, 0)``.
+
+    CPython's Windows ``os.kill`` calls ``TerminateProcess(handle, sig)`` for
+    any signal other than CTRL_C / CTRL_BREAK, so probing liveness with signal
+    0 terminates the process it asks about — and the only hosts that reach this
+    probe are the ones with no procfs, Windows among them.
+    ``core.platform_compat.pid_alive`` is the tree's platform-safe answer.
+    """
+
+    asked: list[int] = []
+    monkeypatch.setattr(
+        web_tools, "pid_alive", lambda pid: asked.append(pid) or True
+    )
+    monkeypatch.setattr(
+        web_tools.os,
+        "kill",
+        lambda *a, **kw: pytest.fail("os.kill must not be used to probe liveness"),
+    )
+
+    assert web_tools._process_is_alive(4242) is True
+    assert asked == [4242]