Annotations — a DSH client plugin

Select text in a DeepSeek Harness reply or in a document previewed in the right sidebar; a comment box appears. Enter confirms the annotation and collects it into an aggregated "N notes" card above the composer; Cmd/Ctrl+Enter sends every pending annotation to the AI in one message.

中文

Scope — a small, restrained patch. It does one thing and leaves the rest of DSH alone: no built-in slot or layout replaced, no core behaviour touched, no other plugin's data read or written. Upgrading DSH normally needs no change here; disabling or uninstalling restores the stock UI.

flowchart LR
  A[Select text] --> B[Comment box appears]
  B -->|Enter| C[Confirm + collect into the card]
  C -->|Keep annotating| A
  B -->|Cmd/Ctrl + Enter| D[Send all annotations to the AI]

Usage

Action	Result
Select text	The comment box appears next to the selection and gets focus
Type + Enter	Confirms the annotation; it is collected into the "N notes" card above the composer
Cmd/Ctrl + Enter	Confirms and immediately sends all pending annotations to the AI (works inside the comment box or while no input is focused)
Shift + Enter	Newline inside the comment
Cmd/Ctrl + C with no text selected in the comment box	Copies the passage that opened the box (focusing the box collapses the document selection)
Esc	Cancels the comment box
Click the "N notes" card	Expands the quotes and notes; jump to or delete each one
Send with text already in the composer	The typed message and all pending annotations go to the AI as one message (attachments preserved)
Click a numbered dot / highlighted text	Edit or delete that annotation; the number matches its row in the list
Sidebar footer → Annotations	Opens the annotation list as a native right-sidebar tab (conversation / documents / other documents), beside the chat instead of over it; jump or delete

The message the AI receives looks like this:

I annotated 2 specific places below. Please review and act on each one:

1. Quote: "…"
   Location: conversation reply
   Note: …
2. Quote: "…"
   Location: `docs/report.md`
   Note: …

The message language follows the current DSH UI language.

Where it works, and the limits

Surface	Supported
Assistant reply body in the conversation	Yes (including expanded reasoning)
Markdown / plain text / code previews in the right sidebar	Yes
PDF and Word/PowerPoint-to-PDF text layers in the right sidebar	Yes, where text is selectable
Excel preview in the right sidebar	No — the grid is not document text
HTML / web page previews in the right sidebar	No — the body runs in an opaque-origin iframe, so the parent page cannot read its selection
Images, terminal	No

These limits come from how the host renders those surfaces, not from the plugin.

Design choices

• One highlight color. The comments carry the emphasis, so there is no color picker.
• Composer stays clean. Annotations are not pasted into the input as text; they aggregate into one "N notes" card that expands on click.
• Sidebar list stays. Open it from the sidebar footer; it docks as a native right-sidebar tab next to documents instead of covering the conversation.
• No export, copy, or diagnostics extras. The plugin only annotates and sends.

Annotation lifecycle

• Annotations live in localStorage; the list only shows chat annotations of the active session plus document annotations.
• Deleted session — its chat annotations are pruned automatically after startup or when the list is opened. The automatic pass only runs once the session index is stable across two counts, so a partially loaded sidebar is never mistaken for deleted sessions.
• Archived session — its annotations are kept because the session can be reopened. They do not count toward the active session badge; use "Clean up → Clean other sessions" to remove them.
• Document annotations — removed about a second after the batch is sent, and stale sent document annotations are pruned on load, so PDF highlights do not survive into a later modification round.
• Conversation annotations — sent highlights and list rows stay until you choose "Clean up → Clean sent annotations".
• Document annotations — tied to the file path and never auto-pruned; delete them row by row if needed.

How it works

• Client-only bundle. index.js exports an empty apply(); all behavior lives in client.js.
• Additive slots only — no shipped UI is replaced:
  • shell.overlay — comment box, highlight dot, edit dialog, annotation list, toasts;
  • conversation.input.overlay — the aggregated card above the composer;
  • sidebar.right.pane.tab — the annotation list as a right-sidebar tab (registered through sidebarRightTabs as the annotation kind);
  • sidebar.footer.action — the Annotations entry at the sidebar foot, opening or focusing that tab.
• Highlights use the CSS Custom Highlight API (::highlight() + CSS.highlights), so React-owned text is never mutated and streaming/folding cannot conflict.
• Quote anchoring — each segment stores exact/prefix/suffix/start; re-renders resolve it with context scoring. Chat rows are addressed by data-chat-anchor-key inside [data-conversation-session]; sidebar documents by data-textpreview-url / resource address.
• Sending uses sessions.scope(sessionId).conversation.send(text) to deliver the batch as one user message.
• Numbering — current-session chat annotations plus document annotations are numbered 1..N in creation order; dots, the composer card and the sidebar list share that numbering.
• Persistence in localStorage under dsh.annotation.v1 (per browser profile, synced across windows via storage events).

Install

Install from npm:

dsh plugin --profile <profile> add @fanfan4589/dsh-annotation

Or ask the DSH agent to install the checkout with plugin_manager install_bundle, then refresh the page once.

Uninstall through Plugin Manager; annotations stay in localStorage.

Development

node build.mjs                 # generate client.js
node --test test/core.test.mjs # 20 pure-logic tests
node test/smoke.mjs            # bundle load + slot registration + component render smoke test
node tools/validate.mjs        # manifest/locale/icon/bundle validation

No dependencies beyond Node.js built-ins.

Known limits

• Annotations live in the current browser profile only.
• PDF support covers selectable text layers; scanned image-only PDFs cannot be annotated.
• Changes to client.js need a page refresh.
• If a third-party sidebar renders its own button over the selection, the comment box tries to avoid it.

License

MIT © 2026 feifandiv