rigdoctor/docs/SPEC.md

# RigDoctor — Product Specification (DRAFT v0.2)

> Living spec. The foundational decisions (name, language, platform/GPU priority, MVP scope,
> packaging, scope-of-action, GUI/tray) are now settled — see `DECISIONS.md` (D1–D11).
> Anything still marked **[OPEN]** is tracked there (D12–D15).

## 1. Vision

A single, modular toolkit that lets a Linux gamer **monitor**, **diagnose**, and
**understand the health** of their machine — especially the hard-to-catch faults that happen
under gaming load. The goal is to make otherwise near-impossible-to-investigate problems
(random freezes, the screen suddenly going black mid-game, GPU "lost" events) tractable by
capturing the right data automatically and explaining it in plain language. Users install
only the modules relevant to their hardware via an interactive installer.

**Motivating cases:**
- An RTX 3070 intermittently falls off the PCIe bus under heavy GPU/VRAM load
  (`Xid 79` / `Xid 154`, `NV_ERR_GPU_IS_LOST`). The crash is OS-independent (also seen on
  Windows in Tarkov) and load-correlated, pointing at hardware (VRAM thermals / power
  transients / PCIe signal integrity).
- A monitor going black mid-session (e.g. during Path of Exile) — is it the GPU dropping,
  a driver reset, a cable/DP link issue, or a power event? Manually impossible to tell after
  the fact.

In both cases the last sensor readings before the freeze are normally never captured.
RigDoctor's crash-safe logger is designed to fix exactly that.

## 2. Goals / Non-goals

**Goals**
- Catch and preserve the machine's state in the seconds before a hard freeze.
- Make hard-to-investigate gaming faults debuggable: collect scattered signals, correlate
  them, and explain them.
- Offer **three ways to run**: full **CLI / headless** (works over SSH), a **desktop GUI**,
  and a **system-tray / top-menu-bar applet** with quick actions. (D10/D11)
- Be modular: a novice installs a one-click "monitor + capture + report" bundle; a power
  user installs everything including the GUI, tray, and diagnostics.
- Low overhead; safe defaults; no telemetry/phone-home.

**Non-goals (for now)**
- Not a benchmark-score / e-peen leaderboard tool.
- **Not a stress-test / load-generator** — explicitly out of scope (D7). Users can run
  existing tools (gpu-burn, vkmark, stress-ng) alongside the logger if they want.
- Not an overclocking utility.
- **Not (yet) an auto-fixer.** RigDoctor is **read-only**: it diagnoses and *suggests*
  actions (with the exact command where possible) but does not apply changes itself in this
  stage. Auto-apply is a deliberate later milestone behind explicit consent. (D9)

## 3. Target users & platforms

- **Users:** Linux gamers from novice ("is my PC ok?" + alerts, via GUI/tray) to advanced
  (raw logs, log forensics, headless capture over SSH).
- **Distros:** **Ubuntu first** (and Debian via `apt`). Arch (`pacman`) / Fedora (`dnf`) /
  openSUSE (`zypper`) best-effort later, behind the distro abstraction. (D3)
- **GPUs:** **NVIDIA first** (seed hardware). AMD second, Intel third — behind the vendor
  abstraction. (D4)
- **Display:** GUI and tray must work under both X11 and Wayland on Ubuntu/GNOME; **all core
  functionality must also work fully headless** (CLI, over SSH, no display).
- **Runtime:** Python 3 + Qt (PySide6). Core/CLI/daemon are stdlib-only; GUI and tray add
  PySide6. (D2)

## 4. Functional requirements (by module)

> Module IDs are stable. **M7 (stress/repro) is dropped** (D7). M10/M11 are the new GUI and
> tray modules.

### M1 — Sensor core (foundation, always installed)
Unified sampling of: CPU temp/freq/load, per-core; GPU temp/(mem-junction if exposed)/
clocks/power/util/fan/VRAM/PCIe gen+width/throttle reasons; RAM (DDR5 SPD) temps; NVMe/SSD
temps; system load. Pluggable sources: `nvidia-smi`/NVML (first), `amdgpu` sysfs/`rocm-smi`
(later), `/sys/class/hwmon`, `lm-sensors`. Stdlib-only.

### M2 — Live monitor (TUI)
HWMonitor-style terminal dashboard: current / session-min / session-max per sensor, grouped
by subsystem, with throttle/critical highlighting. Refresh rate configurable. The terminal
face of the live data (the GUI in M10 presents the same data graphically).

### M3 — Crash-capture logger (daemon)
Headless background sampler that writes CSV/JSON and **`fsync`s every sample** so the last
readings survive a hard lock. Detects GPU "lost"/hang (query timeout) and writes a marker.
Ring-buffer/rotation to bound disk use. Runs as a `systemd --user` service. **Trigger model
is user-selectable** (D6): always-on, game-launch-triggered, or manual (CLI / tray button).
Stdlib-only.

### M4 — Health report (one-shot)
Scans `journalctl` for Xid, kernel panics, OOM-killer, MCE, PCIe AER, thermal events; checks
SMART disk health; flags driver/library version mismatches; verifies GPU firmware; prints a
prioritized findings list with plain-language explanations and **suggested** fixes (read-only
per D9). Reuses M1 for a live snapshot.

### M5 — System inventory
CPU/GPU/motherboard/BIOS/RAM/storage, kernel, driver versions, X11/Wayland + compositor,
PCIe topology. Exportable (Markdown/JSON) to paste into forum/bug reports.

### M6 — Gaming environment checks
Detects & evaluates: GPU power profile / persistence mode, CPU governor, Proton/Wine/Steam
versions, GameMode, MangoHud, shader cache, swappiness, hugepages, CPU mitigations,
PCIe ASPM. Flags settings that hurt stability/performance and **suggests** the fix command
(read-only per D9).

### M8 — Alerting
Threshold + event alerts (desktop notification / sound / log) on overheat, throttle,
GPU-lost, SMART failure. Surfaces in the tray applet (M11) when installed. Optional.

### M10 — Desktop GUI (PySide6/Qt)
Full graphical front-end over the core engine: live dashboard (graphs/gauges), browse and
visualize captured crash logs, run a health report and view findings, view system inventory,
toggle the logger and its trigger mode. Mirrors CLI capability for non-terminal users.
Optional module (pulls in PySide6).

### M11 — System-tray / menu-bar applet (PySide6/Qt)
A small always-available applet in the Linux top menu bar (system tray /
StatusNotifierItem; on Ubuntu/GNOME via the AppIndicator extension). Optional module.
Contents (D13):
- **At-a-glance live readouts (from M1)** in the dropdown, refreshed periodically:
  **CPU temp, GPU temp, memory used/total** (e.g. "14 GB / 32 GB"); a status dot
  (normal / throttling / alert) alongside.
- **Run Diagnostic** — the headline action; launches the *guided diagnostic session* below.
- **Supporting actions:** Open dashboard (M10), Start/Stop recording, Snapshot now, Quit.

### Guided diagnostic session (M3 + M4 workflow)
The "Run Diagnostic" flow available from the tray (M11), the GUI (M10), and the CLI:
1. **Pick a game to focus on** — chosen from detected/installed games (via the D12 game
   detection: Steam library / recently played / running process).
2. **Collect** — RigDoctor runs a focused crash-capture session (M3) scoped to that game:
   it logs while you play, bracketing the session via the D12 wrapper/watcher.
3. **Scan & analyze** — when the session ends (or after a crash + reboot), it runs the
   health report (M4) over the captured window + system logs to surface likely issues.
4. **Present findings** — a prioritized, plain-language list with suggested fixes
   (read-only, D9).
This is the one-click expression of the seed use case; it orchestrates existing modules
rather than adding a new one.

### M9 — Installer (see ARCHITECTURE §5)
Interactive wizard: detect GPU vendor (NVIDIA-first) → present module menu grouped into
bundles with descriptions and the exact packages each needs → resolve & install (apt first)
→ write config → optionally enable the `systemd --user` logger service and pick its trigger
mode. Delivered alongside the `.deb` (D8). Module list/bundling is final per D14.

## 5. Non-functional requirements
- **Zero hard deps for the core/CLI/daemon** — Python stdlib + tools already present. **Qt
  (PySide6) is required only by the GUI (M10) and tray (M11) modules**, declared in the
  `.deb` and pulled in only when those modules are selected.
- **Crash-safe logging** — flush + `fsync` per sample; bounded disk usage.
- **Low overhead** — default ≤1 Hz sampling; negligible CPU/GPU cost. The always-on daemon
  is stdlib-only (no Qt loaded) so it stays tiny.
- **Headless-equivalent** — every diagnostic capability is reachable from the CLI; the GUI
  and tray are conveniences over the same engine, never the only way to do something.
- **Privacy** — local only; inventory export is opt-in and reviewable; no telemetry.
- **Portability** — graceful degradation when a sensor/tool is unavailable (N/A, not crash).

## 6. Open questions
None tracked — all foundational decisions (D1–D15) are settled; see `DECISIONS.md`. Detail
to flesh out during build: the tray's supporting-action set and per-module apt package names.
Packaging/deps are **Ubuntu/apt-only** (D15) — no multi-distro mapping is maintained.
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