Warsaw, Poland · Open to work

MARCIN
FIRMUGA

From warehouse night shifts to shipping a local-AI system monitor that 41,000 people read about on LinkedIn.
18 months. No investors. No shortcuts.

82
hck_GPT intents
PL + EN, offline
373
process library
entries
41k
LinkedIn post
views (single post)
94°C
built on a 2014
laptop running at

The
real
story

Dec 2024
Lost job. Started writing code instead of a CV.
Jan 2025
First working core/monitor.py — psutil, 1-second ticks. The machine lived.
Apr 2026
v1.7.2 — first signed .exe. 0/70 VirusTotal. A stranger ran a full security audit. It passed.
May 2026
"Most developers never ship an .exe." 41,000 views. Still processing.
Jun 2026
v1.7.7 — Ghost Driver Detection. pnputil /connected. 18 months in.
Jun 2026
v1.7.8 — Thermal baseline per workload. Voltage SPC: Median+MAD, Nelson rules. Charts: pan/zoom/pin.

22 years old. Self-taught. Order picker by day (Żabka, night shifts), programmer when I got home. PC Workman started as a way to understand why my aging laptop was throttling. It became 18 months of obsession.

800+ hours of raw grind. No bootcamp. No team. The architecture, the AI engine, the SQLite pipeline, the WinAPI calls — all figured out from docs, source code, and error messages at 2 AM.

The program has a feature called Ghost Driver Detection because I noticed Windows silently keeps old GPU drivers after you swap cards. I got annoyed, opened the pnputil docs, and wrote the fix. That's how most features happened.

HCK_Labs is not a company. It's a one-man lab. Everything is open-source. Everything is transparent. Build in public means showing the disasters too — the git --force that lost 130 commits, the CP852 encoding bug that broke the power plan system, the System Idle Process spamming alerts for 21 hours straight. All documented. All shipped. All fixed.

PC Workman

v1.7.8 · active dev

Free, open-source Windows system monitor with a local AI assistant, TURBO optimization suite, and hardware tools none of the competitors have. 100% offline. No telemetry. No installer required.

New · v1.7.8
Thermal Learning + Voltage SPC
Learns CPU temperature per workload bucket (idle/gaming/heavy etc.) via Welford's algorithm. Voltage SPC: Median+MAD, Nelson rules 1/2/3/5. No static thresholds — your hardware's actual normal.
v1.7.7
Ghost Driver Detection
pnputil /connected vs registry comparison — finds leftover GPU/audio/USB drivers from replaced hardware. Bordeaux badge, popup, pnputil /remove-device with confirmation.
hck_GPT
82-Intent Local AI
Rule engine (confidence ≥ 0.65) + Ollama LLM fallback. Polish + English per message. Every answer uses live psutil data. Zero cloud, zero API key.
Optimization
TURBO Suite
Auto RAM Flush (with per-process exclusions), Turbo Power Plan, Service Stop (Gaming/Work/Economy profiles), Process Guard. Each with AUTO toggle + prefs persistence.
Monitoring
DeepMonitor
ttk.Treeview — Sensor / Value / Min / Max. Heat tints per row type. Save to .txt or .csv. SQLite-backed time-series via hck_stats_engine.
Visualization
2.5D PC Map
Pillow-rendered isometric scene at 2× SSAA. Case, mobo, CPU, GPU, RAM, SSD, PSU, fans. Components pulse and color-shift with live heat/load data.
Management
Startup & Services
Registry-based startup manager (HKCU + HKLM + HKLM32). 40+ services in 4 tiers. TURBO integration. All changes logged to JSON, revert with one click.
PC_Workman v1.7.8/
├── core/
│   ├── thermal_baseline.py     # Welford's alg · 5 workload buckets · JSON persist
│   └── voltage_analyzer.py     # Median+MAD · Nelson rules 1/2/3/5 · anomaly decay
├── ui/components/
│   └── interactive_chart.py    # pan / zoom / click-pin / minimap / baseline band
├── hck_gpt/
│   ├── hybrid_engine.py        # confidence ≥ 0.65 → rule engine; else → Ollama LLM
│   ├── responses/builder.py    # 5600+ lines, 70+ _resp_* handlers
│   └── memory/proactive_monitor.py  # _check_voltage_rails() · voltage_spike / voltage_trend alerts
├── hck_stats_engine/
│   └── db_manager.py           # WAL-mode SQLite, thread-local connections
└── ui/pages/first_setup_drivers.py
    ├── _get_pnp_connected_names()  # pnputil /connected → physically present HW only
    └── _check_ghost()          # registry entry NOT in connected set = ghost
Python 3.9+
everything runs on this
Tkinter
full custom UI, no Qt
SQLite (WAL)
time-series stats engine
pnputil / WinAPI
ghost driver detection
psutil + WMI
live hardware data
Pillow
2.5D isometric at 2× SSAA
Ollama (local LLM)
fallback for open queries
PyInstaller
onedir .exe, ~95 MB
winreg
startup + driver scanning

Three weekly posts. 9 editions each. Real commits, real failures, real numbers — not a dev diary, a public record of how software actually gets built.

Monday
Grind Blueprint
This week's plan. Public commitment before a single line is written. Weekly scope, concrete tasks, and what it takes to ship between shifts.
#9 · 41,000 views
Wednesday
Code Autopsy
One bug or feature, dissected. Real code, real cause, real fix. Not tutorial-quality examples — the actual mess that shipped last week.
#10 · 910 views
Friday
Shipped & Scarred
Monday's plan vs Friday's reality. Every win, every thing that broke, every scar from the week. Unfiltered.
#9 · 788 views
41k
"Most developers never ship an .exe." — single LinkedIn post
27k
Monday Grind #9 — 28 community-driven AI intents
3k+
Wednesday Code Autopsy #8 — Live Guide spotlight tech
58
GitHub stars — zero promotion budget, word of mouth
9×
Monday / Wednesday / Friday — never missed an edition
HN
HackerNoon article — full PC Workman deep-dive, reshared without tagging

Let's build
something real

Junior/mid Python roles, local AI, system tooling, open-source. Or just want to talk about the grind — easy to reach.

// open to work
What I'm looking for
  • Junior/mid Python developer role
  • Local AI or system tooling work
  • Open-source adjacent or build-in-public culture
  • A team that ships real things for real users
Warsaw, Poland · remote-friendly · available now
currently building
$ git branch
* v1.7.8-dev
$ focus
→ hck_GPT audit
→ Services Manager UX
→ Wednesday Code Autopsy #10