Build in public.
Three series. Every week.

Building an AI-powered system monitor in public since 2025, documented as it happens. Real numbers, real bugs, real decisions. No retrospective polish.

Marcin Firmuga — My Story
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521process definitions
published series
110hck_GPT intents
★ New · Scaling Laws Forty-eight days, a taxi, and a game. Everything I have built has earned 70 zł. 474 commits made in the evenings after ten to twelve hour shifts. What building a game alone looked like, what it cost in hours, money and people, and what happens next. Read the story → ★ New · The complete record

Fourteen months, four jobs, one application, and still no job in software

Every month, with the real dates and the real numbers. A warehouse in the Netherlands, being fired three days before Christmas, a convenience store, welding plastic, a taxi, and 23 released versions in between. Including the months where nothing worked.

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★ New · Now on the Microsoft Store

From a Warehouse Floor to the Microsoft Store

A year ago I scanned barcodes and coded every night because I was afraid of disappearing. Today PC Workman is on the Microsoft Store — permanently. The whole story, and the math underneath it.

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★ Featured · The story behind 1.8.0

The Man Who Got Himself Back

Fired three days before Christmas. A 2014 laptop at 94°C. Built after the welding shift. I taught a program to remember your machine — and spent the same year getting myself back. The release note and the confession.

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Prefer the technical release notes? → 1.8.0 — The Release That Remembers

Scaling Laws

Behind the game dev scene

The feature

I sat on a finished build for three weeks because I was afraid of it

Twenty-nine days from the first commit to a public build, written down while it was still uncomfortable. What the fear actually was, what shipping cost, and the first numbers back.

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Guides from building it

Scaling Laws is an AI company tycoon built by Marcin Firmuga under HCK Labs. Version 0.4.0 is free for Windows. The game page has the download, and How Scaling Laws works opens the machinery.

The series
Monday

Grind Blueprint

The week's plan, announced publicly before the work starts. A commitment you can't quietly walk back.

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Wednesday

Code Autopsy

One bug or feature on the table: root cause, dead ends, the actual fix. Code included.

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Friday

Shipped & Scarred

Monday's plan vs Friday's reality. What shipped, what died, what scars remain.

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Latest posts
Long reads
Receipt PRO essay · silent failures The most dangerous bug does not crash. It succeeds. Six real failures that ran perfectly and did nothing, the week I let an assistant write more than I read, and the five checks that catch them. Read the essay →
THE STORYfull journey

From warehouse night shifts to a homemade AI

A 2014 laptop at 94°C, a firing on December 22nd, and the monitor that came out of it.

PROFILEabout the author

Who builds PC Workman

Marcin Firmuga — solo developer, HCK_Labs. The person behind every commit.

MF

Marcin Firmuga

Solo developer · founder of HCK_Labs · builds PC Workman in public

Every post in these series is written by me, from the actual commits of that week. New editions land on LinkedIn and dev.to first — the archive lives here.