Automated Life Scripts by a Russian Programmer: Overview of the “hacker‑scripts” GitHub Project

A Russian programmer has built a collection of fully automated life‑scripts that can send overtime messages to his wife, request leave, restore a client’s database, and even brew coffee remotely; the GitHub repository for these scripts has become one of the hottest projects recently.

The GitHub project named “hacker‑scripts” has earned more than 16,000 stars, even surpassing the popularity of Microsoft’s open‑source Visual Studio Code.

The project originated from a chat transcript on the Russian site bash.im; after an English translation by Alex of JitBit, a GitHub user named NARKOZ recreated the scripts described in the story, primarily to share the anecdote.

Script 1 – Flattering the Wife : This script sends the programmer’s wife a “working overtime” SMS with a randomly chosen excuse, triggered by a scheduled task when an SSH process is still running after 9 p.m. on weekdays.

Script 2 – “Kumar is a Fool” : The script monitors the programmer’s email for new messages from the client data administrator “Kumar”; if keywords such as “help”, “problem”, or “sorry” appear, it automatically connects to the client’s server, restores the affected database from the latest backup, and replies with a friendly “No problem, buddy, be careful next time.”

Script 3 – Requesting Leave : Executed as a scheduled task at 8:45 a.m. on workdays when no SSH activity is detected, this script sends the company an email stating “I’m feeling unwell today” or “I’m working from home”, selecting a random excuse from a text library.

Script 4 – Coffee on Demand : After waiting precisely 17 seconds, the script opens an SSH session to the company’s coffee machine (which runs Linux), sends code that brews a medium‑size half‑caffeinated latte, then waits 24 seconds before pouring the coffee, matching the time the programmer needs to walk from his desk to the machine.

The author notes that if any task would take him more than 90 seconds, he would write a script to automate it.

GitHub repository: https://github.com/NARKOZ/hacker-scripts . Readers are encouraged to click “Read Original” to view the actual code.

Follow the WeChat public account devopshub for more DevOps and integrated development‑operations information.