In development. Every screenshot here is a real build recording a real machine. The Steam page is still in review.
Coming to Steam
The beauty of charting software, applied to your system.
A 1 Hz recorder listens to your hardware, and captures a tick every second. Sixty-six
data points in all, stemming from your processor, graphics card, memory, drives, the
network, wall socket and beyond. Then it hands them to a charting terminal built with
the rigour and complexity of best in class market software.
Trading terminals have had decades of work poured into one problem: making a river
of numbers legible. Candles, envelopes, distributions, screeners, a tape running
across the top. Almost none of that depends on the numbers being prices.
SystemChart wires that craft to a recorder sitting on your own hardware. One tick
a second, sixty-six data points on every tick, kept at full resolution for as long
as you want them. Nothing averaged away, nothing summarised into an aggregated
blur.
What comes out is a terminal for a single machine. Same instruments, same
discipline, different subject. The questions turn out to be the same ones: what
was normal, when did it change, and what moved with it.
With the window put away, the recorder is the tenth of a per cent Task Manager shows
against it, because reading counters Windows already keeps is the whole cost. Open the
window and you are paying for a window, which is a bill you stop the moment you close
it.
One tick rate, not a decision
A reading a second. Idle, it eases to every five seconds and comes straight back
the moment anything happens. Games and a busy machine always get the full rate.
There is nothing here to tune.
How far back it reaches
Two months free, at the full tick, with nothing averaged down. With a licence,
each size is labelled with how far back it reaches on your machine, at the rate
you are actually writing. Choose no limit and nothing is ever dropped.
The instruments
Charts built for signals.
Candles, ribbons, distributions, ranked screeners, stacked breakdowns and heat
strips. Moving averages, rate of change, dispersion, envelopes and operating zones
on any line. Every chart is drawn from ticks, so zooming in goes all the way to
the source reading rather than to a summarised average.
Everything the machine reports is a symbol you can chart: the hardware, every
application you tag, every game you play. Put a frame rate against a board
temperature, or one application's memory against the whole machine's, on one
panel and one clock.
Read against something
A line on its own is just a shape. Shaded zones show where a reading left its
normal range. Fixed lines mark the limits that mean something on any machine, like
80 degrees. Hours the machine was off are drawn as a gap, not as a slow ramp
overnight.
Ask how often, not just how much
A distribution answers the question a line cannot: how much of the range was spent
up there. A ranked screener puts every part in order with its own peak marked. A
heat strip lays the whole machine out as bands sharing one clock, so a moment can
be read straight down.
Pro Manual studies
Draw the studies yourself.
Six studies, not a hundred. The ones that made it measure level, trend, spread or
a limit, which is what any signal has. The rest were built for prices and a crowd,
and your machine has neither.
Put any of them on any line, on any page, with your own period, your own colour
and your own thresholds.
Three studies on one line. Normal range at 30 points, high and low at 30, exponential mean at 20.
GPU30 minutes of Counter-Strike 2Chart note
Is my card running too hot when I play? No, and not close. Over half an
hour it averaged 73 per cent load and 360 watts, while the core sat
at 60.8 degrees against a limit of 80. The fan never went past 57 per cent.
The part worth knowing is the fan. It answers a change in temperature about
26 seconds late, so a short burst is over before it has spun up. That is
normal for a fan curve, and it is why a quick spike heats a card more than you
would expect.
Frames held 237 average. There was one hitch, a single second where the
frame rate dropped and the stutter measure jumped together. One second, not a
pattern.
Measured on the author's machine, Saturday 29 August. No position in any of the hardware mentioned.
Moving average
The mean of the last N points. Flattens the noise so the level shows.
Exponential MA
Weighted towards recent points, so it turns sooner than a plain mean.
Normal range
A rolling mean plus and minus N deviations. Outside it is unusual for this window.
Rate of change
Change per minute. This is the one that finds a memory leak or a thermal ramp.
Limit line
A constant you care about. A thermal ceiling, a power budget, a refresh rate.
High / low
The highest and lowest reading across the window, marked where they happened.
Every study explains itself
Each one carries a line saying what it measures, so you can pick without looking
anything up. The foot of the menu says which studies are deliberately absent, and
why.
Or let it mark up the page for you
One button draws a normal range, the heavy and idle zones, and every excursion out
of them, on every chart on the page at once. That part is free and on by default.
Pro is the part where you pick the period, the source and the line.
Studies live on the page you drew them on, and a page is yours to keep. Add drawing
tools, custom limits, Compare and repeated experiments on top, and every one of them
still reads without a licence once it exists.
The tape
Real news headlines, straight from your machine.
Every chart in the application answers a question you already had. The tape answers
one you did not. It runs under the tabs the way a wire service runs under a
broadcast, and it is the only surface here that volunteers anything.
It is written the way the market is written, because the market already solved this
problem. Each hardware family is a stock. Something that rises firms, climbs, gaps
up or rockets, in that order, depending on how far it went. Something that falls
eases, slips, drops or craters. A reading pinned at its ceiling is halted. Two
readings that move as one are in lockstep. One that leaves and comes back made a
round trip.
Nothing is ranked by recency. Every candidate headline is graded on how far outside
this machine's own ordinary it sat, and only the strongest survives per symbol, so
one loud event cannot take the whole tape. Click a headline and it opens onto the
captured ticks behind it, with the before and after figures and the exact window
they came from.
Nothing on it is predicted, and nothing on it is advice. A quiet machine gets a
quiet tape, which is the answer you want most days.
A headline, opened onto the readings it was made from.
Eight it wrote about this machine, unedited
PWR
Power stock rockets 337 W as Aliens: Dark Descent opens
19h ago
GPU Capped
GPU clock stock halted at 2955 MHz for 9 minutes
19h ago
NET TopRetrace
Network stock round trips to 986.4 Mb/s and gives it all back
20h ago
CPU
CPU stock sets a session high at 100%
44m ago
GPU
VRAM stock gaps down 3.9 GB as Counter-Strike 2 closes
3d ago
NET
Network stock sells off 31.9 Mb/s on the handoff from Visual Studio Code to Edge
2h ago
MEM
Memory stock sets a session low at 15.5 GB
4h ago
GPU
GPU clock stock gaps up 1648 MHz with no name on the trade
3h ago
Every one of those is a restatement of something measured, and every one opens onto the
ticks it was made from. Notice how many say with no name on the trade when they
run in the application: nothing was running that explains the move, and saying so is
more useful than picking a culprit.
Every tick
What gets written down.
Sixty-six data points about the machine itself, plus a set for every drive volume,
every application and every game. Graphics telemetry comes off the card where the
card reports it. Where the card stays quiet, vendor neutral counters take over and
the rest is left blank instead of filled with a guess.
Processor 17
load.avg / min / max
freq.ghz
cores.busy, cores.p, cores.e
time.kernel, time.user
time.dpc, time.interrupt
ctxsw, queue, threads
Graphics 20
load.avg, mem.ctrl.pct
temp.c, room.c, thermal.cw
power.w, power.pct, power.limit.w
clock.core, clock.mem
fan.pct
vram.mb, vram.pct
nvenc.pct, nvdec.pct
pcie.rx.mbps, pcie.tx.mbps
throttle.any, .power, .thermal
Memory 8
used.gb, commit.gb
cache.gb
faults, hardfaults
pool.paged.gb
pool.nonpaged.gb
Drives 7
load.avg
read.mbps, write.mbps
latency.ms
iops, queue
temp.c every ten seconds
free space per volume
Network 8
rx.mbps, tx.mbps
util.pct, link.mbps
packets
errors, discards
Power 6
watts.cpu, watts.gpu
watts.platform
watts.psu
load.avg at the wall
cost at your tariff
Per application
cpu.pct
mem.mb
io.mbps
vram.mb
Per game
fps.avg, fps.low
frametime.ms
frametime.worst
gpu.busy
stutter.pct
Frames are the exception. They are counted as the game presents them, at its rate and
not the recorder's, so a session at 240 Hz is measured at 240 Hz. When data points are
added they are listed in the changelog, with the version
they arrived in.
Cost tracker
What your machine costs to run.
The recorder already measures watts at the wall, so the only thing standing
between that and money is a number off your electricity bill. Type in what you pay
per kilowatt hour and every chart of power becomes a chart of spend.
1
Find the rate on your bill
One number, in pence or cents per kilowatt hour. It is on every statement, usually beside the standing charge.
2
Put it into Settings
Running cost takes the tariff and your processor's rated power. Nothing else is needed and nothing is sent anywhere.
3
Read the meter
Cost per hour sits in the live ticker. The power page breaks the draw down by part, so you can see what is actually spending it.
Where the watts go
Processor, graphics card, platform and the loss in the power supply itself, and
the four add up to the reading at the wall. A machine idling at 90 W and one
idling at 180 W are a real difference in what you pay, and until it is charted
nobody notices either.
One number, once
Set the tariff and it applies to everything already captured, not just to what
happens next. A year of history becomes a year of spend the moment you type it in.
Assistant
Let an agent query SystemChart for answers.
SystemChart holds millions of ticks that no chat window can read on its own. So it
exposes them the way a database exposes rows: as a set of tools an agent can call,
each one running a real function over your stored readings and handing back a
figure it did not invent.
The model has no other route to a number. It cannot see the ticks, it cannot round
one, and it cannot average two in its head. If it says 0.95, a correlation ran.
Under every answer sits the list of tools it called, so you can go and check.
Use the panel in the window, or point the assistant you already pay for at this
machine over Model Context Protocol and never open SystemChart at all. Either way
it is a model you choose and a bill you own; the application ships with no key.
In the window, or in your own assistant
Paste an endpoint and a key and the panel opens beside your charts. A model on the
same machine needs no key at all, and Ollama, LM Studio and Foundry Local are one
click each.
SystemChart is also a Model Context Protocol server, so the assistant you already
pay for can read this machine directly. Settings writes the whole configuration
block with the real path in it, for Claude Desktop or for VS Code, and copies it on
one button. Between reading about this and using it sits a paste and a restart.
Windows encrypts any key you set under your account before it goes near the disk.
The window that set it never gets it back.
Answers you can check
The chips under an answer name every tool that ran to produce it. Open the same
page over the same window and the same numbers come up, because they came from the
same readings.
Ask about a window with no ticks in it and it says so. A reading that never moved
gets named as such rather than reported as a zero, which is the difference between
a steady fan and a fan that has stopped.
Put to gpt-5.4-mini through Azure AI Foundry, against this machine's own 24.9 million
readings. Three consecutive turns, unedited, tool names as the panel prints them.
My machine felt slow last night. Anything actually happen, or was it me?
briefshow_pageset_timeframe
Probably not much was wrong.
Over the last 12 hours, the charts show:
CPU load averaged 12.7% and peaked at 75.5%; it was rising a little.
RAM used averaged 46.4% and was also slowly rising.
SSD latency stayed very low at 0.12 ms on average.
GPU load averaged 9.95% and was flat.
Wall power averaged 182 W and was flat.
What I do not see is a clear sustained spike in disk latency, GPU load, or a hard
CPU bottleneck. There was a brief CPU max, but the summary does not show a
lasting event.
I’ve opened the Overview page at 12h so you can look at the same window. If
you want, I can narrow it to last night and check for a specific spike or change
point.
That power spike, what was the graphics card doing at the same moment, and did it get hot enough to matter?
At the power step, the GPU was also active: power and GPU load moved together
very closely, with correlation 0.9738 and no lag.
What the GPU was doing:
GPU load over the last 12h ranged from 0 to 100, with a median of 7 and a 95th percentile of 30.575.
That means it was usually light, with some bursts.
Did it get hot enough to matter?
GPU temperature over the last 12h had a mean of 43.385 °C, median 43 °C, and maximum 66.75 °C.
That’s warm, but nothing in the readings says it was unusually hot for this machine.
I’ve put the GPU page in front and set it to 12h so you can inspect the same
window. If you want, I can look for the exact power step timing against GPU temp
or fan behavior.
Which application costs me the most processor over a normal day, and is that reasonable for what it is?
applicationsmachine
The biggest processor user over a normal day was
AliensDarkDescentGameSteam-Win64-Shipping at 17.74% of the whole
machine.
Is that reasonable? Yes, for a game that’s a plausible CPU share, especially on this machine:
CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090
24 cores / 24 threads
Other notable users were:
RocketLeague: 9.42%
testhost: 4.94%
Code: 4.47%
chrome: 3.73%
There was also 1.36% not attributed, which means some short-lived processes
were seen between sampling walks.
Every figure above came out of a function that ran over stored ticks. 0.9738 is a
correlation computed in C# over the instants both readings share. 17.74% is an
average of the per process walk across a day. The model cannot round one, average two
or produce a third, because it has no route to a number except through a tool. The
third answer names its own blind spot without being asked to: work too short-lived
for the walk to catch is reported as unattributed rather than blamed on whichever
application happened to be nearby.
Twenty tools it can reach for
Summarise
brief
describe
machine
capabilities
capture_status
Measure
correlate
regress
changepoint
trends
changed
Look up
history
composition
applications
games
sessions
events
Change the view
show_page
set_timeframe
add_study
set_markup
Sixteen of these only read. The four that change something change what is on screen
and stop there. None writes a tick, deletes one, or touches capture, settings or
licensing. An instruction smuggled into a window title earns you a wrong answer and
no wrong actions.
The panel in the window and the tool server offer the same twenty. A test compares
the two lists against each other on every build, because they drifted apart once and
the only thing that noticed was a real question getting a worse answer in one place
than the other.
While you play
A frame counter, not an injected hook.
The counter is its own click through window sitting above the game. Nothing gets
written into the game process, so anti-cheat has nothing to object to and antivirus
has nothing to quarantine.
Ten fields to choose from and a corner to put it in. Frames get captured whether
the counter is showing or not, at the game's own rate, so every session leaves a
page behind with its lows, its worst frames, and how it compares to the last time
you played.
Settings, Frame counter.
Settings
One window, eight pages, no account.
Everything the application can be told is in one place, on the same glass the
installer is made of. Nothing here reaches a server. There is no profile to sign
into, no sync, and no setting whose real purpose is to sell you the next tier.
Most of it you will set once and forget. How far back to keep, and which corner
the frame counter sits in, are the two that actually matter on day one.
Walk through all eightCapture, History, Frame counter, Appearance, Running cost, Agent, Report a problem, About.
Capture
The recorder runs at 1 Hz and eases to a tick every five seconds when the
machine is idle, returning the moment anything happens. Games and anything
over 25 per cent load always get the full rate, so a session is never sampled
thinly. There is nothing to choose.
Start with Windows lives here too. Capture is worth leaving on because the span
you can look across is the span you captured, and a gap cannot be filled in
afterwards.
History
Every choice is annotated with what it buys on your machine, measured
from your own last day of capture rather than from an average of somebody
else's. This one writes about 12 MB a day, so it prints the real span beside
each size.
Free reaches back two months. Pro removes the limit entirely. Either way the
only thing that ever deletes a reading is the size you chose yourself.
Frame counter
Ten fields, four corners, a size and an optional dark plate. The sketch is live,
so choosing a corner shows you the corner instead of asking you to start a game
and find out.
Frames get captured whether the counter is showing or not, so turning it off
costs you nothing in the record.
Appearance
Six colour themes and seven finishes for the window icon, the taskbar button and
the tray. The tray gets its own choice for while capture is stopped, so you can
tell at a glance without opening anything.
Motion is here as well: none, standard, or charts that flow continuously between
readings instead of stepping.
Running cost
One number, entered once: the unit rate off your electricity bill. From then on
the wall reading is also a price, per hour, per session and per game.
Nothing is looked up and no tariff is guessed. If you leave it blank the app
charts watts and says nothing about money.
Agent
Pick a provider, paste an endpoint, and the assistant panel opens beside your
charts. A model on the same machine needs no key at all. Windows encrypts any
key you do set under your account before it touches the disk, and the window
that set it can never read it back.
Underneath sits the tool server block, written out with the real path already
filled in for Claude Desktop or VS Code, copied on one button.
Report a problem
One button gathers component logs, versions, what your hardware can report and
the health of the archive. It leaves out your readings, the process lists it
captured, your history, your sessions and your licence. You approve it before
anything is sent.
You get back a code like SC-AB12CD34EF. Email that with a sentence about what
you were doing and the report can be found. They are deleted after fourteen
days. If the window will not open at all there is a separate Support Reporter
in the Start menu that sends the same thing without loading the charts.
About
Version, edition, whether this copy came from Steam or direct, how long the
recorder has been up, how many readings it holds, how many sessions, the size of
the archive on disk and who the licence belongs to.
It is a status page, not a storefront. Nothing on it asks you for anything.
ProFree captures everything. Pro remembers it.Every tick, every page and every automatic explanation are free, and so are your last two months. Open this to see what a licence adds.
Nothing you captured is ever locked away, and a page built in Pro still reads
without it. Pro buys a memory that goes back years, a model you can ask about your
own machine, and the tools for building your own views and marking up your own
charts.
Six colour themes
All dark, and green stays up and red stays down in every one of them. A theme
changes the room the charts sit in, never what a reading says.
ObsidianNocturneEmberArctic
Graphite and Terminal complete the set. All six are one click in Settings.
Surface
Free
Pro adds
Capture
Every data point, the full 1 Hz tick, autostart, pause and resume
Nothing. Capture is never gated.
History
The last two months, at full resolution, nothing averaged down
As far back as the disk you give it, up to no limit at all
Pin and rename tabs, editable copies, blank pages, the chart palette, saved layouts
Applications and games
Attribution, tags, category pages, game and session pages, peer comparison
Nothing
The tape and findings
All of it, with the captured evidence under every headline, including anything a watch caught
Writing watches of your own
Analysis
All timeframes, automatic markup, operating zones, findings, trends, what changed
Manual indicators, drawing tools, custom limits, Compare, before and after, repeated experiments
Frame counter
On or off, with the default counter
Corner, fields, size and plate
Appearance
Every finish for the window, taskbar and tray, and the Terminal theme
Six colour themes
Assistant
None
The panel in the window and the tool server, against a model you supply
Pro is one payment, once, on Steam. A licence that lapses leaves every reading,
every page and every theme you already chose exactly where they were. History
captured under a licence is never taken back: the span stops growing, it does not
shrink.
Availability
Coming soon to Steam.
The store page is in review. It goes up the day that comes back approved, and
Steam handles the install, the updates and the community from there.
