HEATSOAK

WORLD 10 // INSTRUMENT

NERVE

A machine rendered as a nervous system. Every element that glows, pulses or moves is driven by a real measurement taken from the computer it runs on. Nothing is simulated.

What this page can actually see about your machine

NERVE is a desktop instrument. This is a web page, and a web page is sandboxed on purpose. Below is everything your browser will tell this page, measured live, right now.

What it cannot see, and why that matters

These are the things NERVE measures natively that no web page can reach. Not because they are hidden from you, but because the browser refuses to hand them to a stranger.

• Per core CPU load and the real P and E cluster topology
• Actual memory pressure, a kernel enum rather than a percentage
• Swap activity and page in/out rates
• Disk throughput per device
• Network throughput per interface, VPN separated from physical
• The process table, even just names
• GPU device, renderer and tiler utilisation
• Temperature, fan speed, clock frequency and power draw

The gap between the two lists is the whole point. A native tool asks the kernel and gets an answer. A web page asks and is told a rounded, deliberately coarse version, or nothing at all. Anyone claiming a website scanned your computer is describing the short list above, dressed up.

What NERVE measures natively

Running as a desktop app with a native collector, it reads the real interfaces directly.

• Per core and whole machine CPU with a user and system split
• Memory breakdown and kernel pressure state
• Swap and page rates
• Aggregate GPU utilisation, device, renderer and tiler
• Disk throughput per device
• Network per interface, VPN kept separate and never summed
• The process table, names only, never command line arguments
• Its own CPU and memory cost, shown as overhead rather than hidden

The honesty rules it holds to

A measured zero renders differently from unavailable, from warming up, and from stale. The collector can never emit simulated data: if telemetry stops, the display says so and freezes with a timestamp. Software threads are not cores. Unified memory means no separate VRAM pool is drawn, because there is not one. Temperature, fan speed and power draw are marked not implemented rather than estimated, because reaching them needs root and no privileged helper is installed.

Run it yourself

It is a local build. Nothing phones home, and only process names are ever read.

# build the native collector (Xcode Command Line Tools only)
./collector/build.sh

# build the web bundle, the Electron shell, then launch
cd app
npm install
npm start

# or verify the numbers against the system yourself
./collector/bin/heatsoak-collector --selftest
python3 tools/verify_against_system.py 12

Back to the worldsHear Grain of Sand

Grain of Sand is the record this instrument belongs to. Algorithm, know me. Knows what makes me angry before I even see.