See what Windows is really doing.
A read-only Windows diagnostics app that turns the Event Log into plain language.
Fully offline. No telemetry, no account — nothing leaves your PC.

Download for Windows · Microsoft Store · Website

• Why Pulse
• What's new in 1.4
• Features
• Install
• Privacy and security
• How it works
• Build from source
• Roadmap
• In the press
• Documentation
• How Pulse is built
• Code signing policy
• Contributing · License

Windows already records almost everything that happens: crashes, failed services, driver problems, unexpected restarts. It just writes it down as Event IDs and XML.

Pulse observes, explains and visualizes. It never changes Windows: no injection, no hooks, no patches, no cleaner or optimizer features.

Windows ships two tools for this. Pulse does not replace them; it sits between them.

1.4.3: no more crash on exit, Markdown and Enter-to-send in the Assistant, a custom date range in the Timeline, and a clean uninstall.

1.4.2: the Disk panel totals every drive and shows the system disk's details again.

1.4.1

• Health for every disk: temperature and SMART for each disk, and for NVMe drives wear, spare capacity, power-on time, unsafe shutdowns and media errors.
• What woke the PC: the device or scheduled task behind a wake from sleep.
• Secure Boot events explained, including the SBAT update failure.
• A deeper Assistant: command lines, CPU time, private bytes and Windows services; port and API key settings. It still talks only to a local AI on this PC.

1.4.0

• Blue screens and sudden restarts, explained. Kernel-Power 41 and bug check 1001 are read from their event data: the stop code name, what usually causes it and what to check next. Pulse also tells a forced power-off, a power loss and WHEA hardware errors apart, and groups a blue screen with its restart.
• Open an .evtx from another PC. Export the event log on the PC you are helping and read it in Pulse the same way — even while PulseService is offline.
• Reports you can share. Exports mask user and computer names, profile paths, account SIDs, IP and MAC addresses and serial numbers by default.
• Update notice for the GitHub edition (manual or weekly, off by default).

Full notes: v1.4.3 · v1.4.2 · v1.4.1 · v1.4.0 · CHANGELOG

Timeline

• Live Windows Event Log feed in plain language, newest first, with a one-sentence summary of the last hour and a 24-hour activity strip
• Explained · Technical · Raw XML views for every event
• Correlated incidents (app crash and its error report, blue screen and restart, service crash and recovery)
• Search and filters by severity, source, category, provider, Event ID, process and time; saved searches, bookmarks and pins
• Open exported .evtx files; export the view as JSON or CSV

System Health

• Health score, CPU (frequency-aware, matches Task Manager), memory, GPU, disk and network, with 60-second history
• Per-process CPU, memory and network
• Optional background alerts for sustained high CPU or memory, from the system tray

Inventory

• System: motherboard, BIOS, CPU, memory modules, storage, network adapters, battery
• Devices: USB, PCI, displays, audio, Bluetooth, printers
• Software: installed programs, drivers and Windows services

Reports and diagnostics

• Health, Timeline, Diagnostics and inventory reports as JSON, CSV, HTML or PDF, saved locally
• Service and IPC diagnostics with a support bundle you can attach to an issue

Assistant (optional)

• Ask about this PC in plain language using a model you run yourself in Ollama or LM Studio
• Localhost only, read-only tools; it cannot run commands or change settings

App

• Dark-first Midnight design, Ctrl+K command search, custom title bar, DPI aware
• Settings for appearance, background mode, System Health, Timeline, diagnostics, performance, privacy and updates; all stored locally

Requirements: Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit (x64). The Microsoft Store edition needs Windows 10 version 2004 or later. Installing the background service needs administrator approval (one UAC prompt).

1. Download Pulse-Setup-<version>-windows-x64.exe from the latest release.
2. Run it and accept the UAC prompt. Setup installs the VC++ runtime if needed, registers PulseService and starts it.
3. Open Pulse from the Start menu.

The release also has a payload ZIP. It still needs PulseService and is not a portable edition (see portable vs service).

Pulse Diagnostics on the Microsoft Store — the service is packaged with the app and updates come through the Store.

Each release lists SHA-256 checksums in SHA256SUMS.txt:

Get-FileHash .\Pulse-Setup-1.4.3-windows-x64.exe -Algorithm SHA256

Releases are not code-signed yet (see Code signing policy), so SmartScreen or some antivirus tools may warn about a new file. More help: installation guide · troubleshooting · upgrade notes

• Read-only. Pulse reads Windows data through official APIs and never changes the system.
• Nothing leaves your PC. No telemetry, analytics, crash reporting, account or cloud.
• Network use is opt-in: the Assistant talks only to localhost; the update check (GitHub edition) contacts GitHub only when you click Check or turn on weekly checks.
• Low privilege. PulseService runs as LocalService, not SYSTEM, and talks to the app over a local named pipe that is not reachable from the network.
• Shareable exports. Personal details are masked in reports and exports by default.

Details: security guide · SECURITY.md (reporting vulnerabilities) · privacy policy

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                           Windows                            │
│ Event Log · PDH · DXGI · IP Helper · ETW (network) · SetupAPI│
└──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────┘
                               │ read-only APIs
┌──────────────────────────────▼───────────────────────────────┐
│               PulseService (C++20, LocalService)             │
│     Collectors · crash explainer · humanizer · health ·      │
│     inventory · IPC server                                   │
└──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────┘
                               │ local named pipe (framed binary protocol)
┌──────────────────────────────▼───────────────────────────────┐
│                     Pulse app (Flutter)                      │
│   Timeline · System Health · Inventory · Reports · Assistant │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

• PulseService collects and explains events. Event Log entries are read with EvtQuery / EvtSubscribe; per-process network uses a Pulse-owned ETW session (ADR-009).
• Pulse app renders the UI. Exported .evtx files are read by PulseService.exe --read-evtx, run as the signed-in user (ADR-014).
• Kernel-level activity in the Timeline is planned through ETW, never a driver (ADR-015, proposed).

Architecture and decisions: docs/architecture

Prerequisites: Visual Studio 2022+ Build Tools with C++ (CMake and Ninja), Flutter (stable), and Inno Setup 6 for the installer.

# Service in console mode (no installation needed)
.\tools\scripts\run_service_console.ps1

# App, in a second terminal
.\tools\scripts\run_app.ps1

# Tests
ctest --test-dir build/service
cd apps\pulse_app; flutter analyze; flutter test

# Release installer and ZIP into dist\
.\tools\scripts\package_beta.ps1

Releases are built by .github/workflows/release.yml; a vX.Y.Z tag creates a draft release with checksums. Details: BUILD.md · DEVELOPMENT.md

Repository layout

• Event Log → human-readable Timeline, live monitoring
• System Health, Inventory, Reports, Diagnostics
• Local Assistant (Ollama / LM Studio), Microsoft Store edition — 1.1
• Midnight redesign — 1.2
• Stability release, ~100 MB smaller — 1.3
• Crash explainer, .evtx import, masked exports, update notice — 1.4
• Code-signed releases (SignPath Foundation, in review)
• Process lifecycle in the Timeline via ETW (ADR-015)
• Minidump analysis for blue screens
• Portable edition (postponed; see 40)
• Plugin system, session recording and timeline replay

Every feature should answer one question: "What is Windows doing right now?"

• IlSoftware.it (Italy, 13 October 2026) — Visualizzatore eventi Windows 11 più comprensibile con un tool open source by Michele Nasi. The article covers Pulse 1.2; AI Integration (MCP) mentioned there was replaced by the local Assistant in 1.3.

Pulse is built by one developer with the help of AI coding assistants. AGENTS.md is the instruction file those assistants follow; it is also the product's rulebook (read-only, local-first, official Windows APIs only).

• I decide what Pulse does, how it looks and what ships.
• Every change goes through tests and CI; every release is installed and tested on real machines before it is published.
• The full source is here, under the MIT license, so anyone can review exactly what Pulse runs.

Bug reports and code review are very welcome — open an issue.

Windows releases of Pulse are being moved to signing through the SignPath Foundation's free program for open-source projects (application in review):

Free code signing provided by SignPath.io, certificate by SignPath Foundation.

• Committers and reviewers: Regncreative (maintainer)
• Approvers: Regncreative
• Only release builds produced by this repository's GitHub Actions workflow are signed. Every signing request is approved manually.
• The Microsoft Store edition is signed by Microsoft.

Privacy: This program will not transfer any information to other networked systems unless specifically requested by the user or the person installing or operating it. The optional Assistant only talks to an AI runtime on localhost; the optional update check contacts GitHub only when you ask it to. See the privacy policy.

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please read AGENTS.md and CONTRIBUTING.md first:

1. Keep changes observation-only — no cleaner, optimizer or antivirus features.
2. Run ctest and flutter analyze / flutter test before opening a pull request.
3. Architectural changes need an ADR under docs/architecture/decisions/.

MIT © Regncreative