Hotfix

Keep your machine cool. Hotfix monitors CPU usage and automatically terminates runaway processes before your fan spins up and your battery drains — on both macOS and Windows.

Built by BuildCraft Labs.

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The Problem

Claude extensions, AI tools, and background daemons run rogue — consuming 50–100% CPU for hours, spinning up fans, draining batteries, and generating heat with no visible indication anything is wrong.

How It Works

1. Monitor — Polls all running processes every 5 seconds
2. Detect — Any process sustaining CPU above your configured threshold gets flagged
3. Kill — After your configured duration, it terminates the offender and notifies you

Download

Platform	Download	Requirements
macOS	Hotfix.dmg	macOS 13+ · Apple Silicon or Intel
Windows	Hotfix.exe	Windows 11 · x64

macOS: Not yet notarized — right-click → Open on first launch to bypass Gatekeeper.

Features

• Native system tray — Lives in your menu bar / taskbar, no Dock or taskbar icon
• Configurable threshold — Set the CPU % that triggers monitoring (default: 80%)
• Configurable duration — How long a process must be hot before being killed (default: 60s)
• Kill on sleep — Optionally terminate hot processes when the machine sleeps
• Exclusion list — Protect specific processes from ever being killed
• Auto-updates — Checks GitHub releases for new versions on launch
• Safety exclusions — System-critical processes are permanently protected and can never be killed

Configuration

Settings are accessible from the tray icon → Settings.

Setting	Default	Description
CPU Threshold	80%	Processes above this level are monitored
Kill After	60s	Duration above threshold before termination
Kill on Sleep	On	Kill hot processes when machine sleeps
Exclusions (macOS)	Xcode, swift, clang, node, python3	Processes never killed
Exclusions (Windows)	explorer, svchost, lsass, dwm…	Processes never killed

Build from Source

macOS

Requires Xcode Command Line Tools.

git clone https://github.com/buildcraftlabs/hotfix.git
cd hotfix
bash scripts/build.sh
open "dist/Hotfix.dmg"

Windows

Requires Go 1.22+.

git clone https://github.com/buildcraftlabs/hotfix.git
cd hotfix\windows
go build -ldflags "-H windowsgui -s -w" -o ..\dist\Hotfix.exe .

Releasing a New Version

Releasing is semi-automated. The Windows .exe is built by CI automatically on every new release.

1. Bump version in Sources/Hotfix/UpdateChecker.swift and Resources/Info.plist (macOS)
2. Bump version in windows/main.go (Windows)
3. Build the macOS DMG: bash scripts/build.sh
4. Create a GitHub release tagged v<version> and attach dist/Hotfix.dmg
5. The Build Windows GitHub Actions workflow runs automatically and attaches Hotfix.exe to the release

Users on both platforms will be notified of the update on next launch.

Repository Structure

hotfix/
├── Sources/Hotfix/     # macOS Swift/SwiftUI app
├── Resources/          # macOS Info.plist
├── scripts/            # Build scripts (macOS DMG, icon generation)
├── windows/            # Windows Go app
│   ├── assets/         # Embedded settings HTML (BuildCraft design)
│   └── *.go            # Go source files
├── icon/               # App icon assets
├── landing-page/       # Marketing website
└── .github/workflows/  # CI for Windows builds

License

MIT © BuildCraft Labs