Friday Shipped & Scarred · #18

My First One-Star Review, and I Agreed With Every Word

I read it three times, then something surprised me. I agreed with every word.

By Marcin Firmuga·2026-07-24·5 min read·Friday Shipped & Scarred #18

“GUI needs a lot more refining. This is a very technical application with a fairly steep learning curve.”

Here is the honest truth. I built PC Workman for someone exactly like me. Someone who reads voltage tables for fun and thinks a per-workload thermal baseline is a good time. The reviewer is not that person. Most people are not that person. And a monitor only helps if a normal human can open it and understand what they are looking at.

That review is going on my wall.

Shipped this week

Scarred: the review and that AI test said the exact same thing, one from a stranger and one from my own keyboard. I have been building a tool that speaks my language and quietly asking everyone else to learn it.

So the whole roadmap now bends toward one word. Understandable. Plain-language learning screens. A gentler first five minutes. A monitor a normal person can love, instead of one they have to fight.

One star taught me more than most of the good weeks did. Welding plastic by day, making it simpler by night.

BuildInPublicPythonAIUX
This is the project behind the post. PC Workman is a free, open-source Windows system monitor with an offline AI assistant - everything described here is real, shipped code. Download it or read the source.
← #17My Tests Were Green. The App Was Broken
MF

Marcin Firmuga

Solo developer · HCK_Labs · building PC Workman in public

Every edition is written from that week's real commits. Newest posts premiere on LinkedIn - the archive lives here. More about me: my story.