There’s something about the quiet hours when the rest of the world goes offline. My screens stay lit, lines of code glowing back at me, and I find myself chasing ideas that start small and somehow grow into actual projects. This one began with a simple thought: logs are always talking. Who’s listening? Every failed login and every sudo command sit buried inside endless lines of text. Most people ignore them until something breaks. I wanted to build a little tool that doesn’t sleep, one that keeps an eye on things even when I’m not around, and that’s how ThreatLog Automator came to life.

It started as a weekend experiment to see if I could write a Python script to monitor system logs in real time. I wanted something light and simple with no giant security platforms and no complicated setup. Just Python, a log file, and some curiosity. The final script ended up with three main pieces. Follow Mode keeps watch in real time and spots suspicious events as soon as they happen. Replay Mode runs through old logs when you want to review the past. A lightweight SQLite database stores every alert so nothing gets lost. That’s all it takes. One script, a small database, and you have a basic log monitoring system.

Like most projects, this one taught me things I didn’t expect. Late-night debugging builds real problem-solving skills fast. SQLite turned out to be perfect for small security tools because it is lightweight and simple to set up. And projects tend to grow quickly when you keep adding one more thing after each success. Right now, ThreatLog Automator just flags failed logins and sudo commands, but I’m already thinking about adding email or Slack alerts for real-time notifications, a simple web dashboard for browsing past alerts, and more event types for wider coverage. Each small step teaches me something new.

The code is up on GitHub under ThreatLog Automator. If you like building things with Python or experimenting with security automation, take a look. Maybe it will spark your own late-night project.