Futuristic themes for DeepSeek Harness Desktop

Three cinematic sci-fi themes for DeepSeek Harness, built from the three original design briefs and the concept rendering in docs/design-briefs/, and delivered as one installable plugin for DeepSeek Harness Desktop.

Nostromo Amber	Omni-tool	Renaissance Steel

Settings → General → Futuristic themes — the row the plugin adds (shown with Nostromo Amber active), and the same theme applied to the real app:

What is here

Path	What it is
dsh-futuristic-themes/	the plugin: three registered themes, one Appearance row, optional decorative layer
docs/THEME-CONTRACT.md	authoring contract: palette roles, token derivation, effects rules, preview loop
docs/INSTALL.md	Desktop install (plugin manager or manual profile edit) and rollback
docs/qa/	independent audit harness output + end-to-end verification report and screenshots
tools/	WKWebView screenshot harness, independent theme audit, Desktop installer
docs/design-briefs/	the original design briefs for each theme (Russian, verbatim) + the concept rendering, with English digests

The three themes

Nostromo Amber — retro CRT terminal

Original brief: docs/design-briefs/Nostromo-Amber.md Almost-black warm metal (#0B0804), amber phosphor (#FFB000 accents, #FFD98A text), 1 px amber bezels, monospace type, restrained CRT layer (fine scanlines, phosphor halo, heavy vignette). Hot #FF4A1C warnings and #7FBF3F OK states. No glow on long-form text; long sessions stay readable.

Omni-tool — holographic HUD

Original brief: docs/design-briefs/Omni-tool.md Dark blue glass (#0A0D12, four glass surface steps), orange action accent (#FF9A1F), cold cyan secondary signals (#3FD0FF reserved for informational states), warm #F2E3C9 text, thin warm frames. Decorative layer: top-fading cyan/warm projection grid + corner glows. Orange commands actions; cyan never competes with it.

Renaissance Steel — cold industrial console

Original brief: docs/design-briefs/Renaissance-Steel.md Flat steel surfaces (#07090C / #0E1318), 1 px blue-grey frames (#26323D), #5FB4E6 accent, #BCD0E0 text, #5FD3B0 success, #E2553F warning. Almost no glow: a faint overhead light, a hairline steel bezel and a soft corner vignette — the calmest theme of the three.

All three replace the complete semantic --dsw-* token set (127 tokens each) and switch the interface to a monospace stack; the decorative layer can be disabled in one click and respects prefers-reduced-motion. They are dark-only by design.

How it works

• The plugin registers three theme definitions through the host's official third-party theme extension point (ctx.theme.register) and contributes one settings.general.item row.
• A compact palette (15 roles + optional per-token overrides) is expanded by scripts/lib/derive.mjs into the full token set, so every theme is complete by construction; the build fails on missing required tokens and warns on contrast regressions.
• ui-theme.preference only accepts light|dark|system, so a theme id is never written there (that would crash the next boot with theme registry lost). The selected theme lives in localStorage and is re-applied after the host settings document loads; the durable preference stays dark, which also makes the first paint already dark.
• Choosing the host's built-in Light/Dark/System appearance exits the theme deliberately and does not resurrect it on reload.
• Nothing host-side is registered: no services, routes, tools or settings namespaces. The browser half imports only react + the host services it declares. Decorations are a single pointer-events-transparent overlay.

Verification

• Static audit (tools/audit-themes.mjs, independent of the build): 159/159 checks PASS, 0 failures, 0 warnings — package shape, theme completeness, 127-token derivation per theme, full WCAG contrast matrix, effects-CSS discipline, built-bundle truth.
• End-to-end verification on a live dsh web instance (docs/qa/verification-report.md): 8/8 items PASS — all three themes via the row and via persisted reload, live body tokens byte-identical to the derived sets (127/127 × 3), persistence with no palette flash, clean exit path, effects switch (pixel-diff confined to the overlay), menus/composer/settings regressions clean, live contrast body 12.6–15.4:1 and composer 11.2–13.1:1.
• Two LOW defects found by the verifier (boot-restore grace race when choosing a built-in appearance within ~5 s of a reload; missing explicit :focus-visible ring on the row controls) are fixed and re-verified; details and evidence (28 screenshots, 57 reproducible step scripts) are in docs/qa/.

Install / use

The canonical source is this GitHub repository — the installable package is the dsh-futuristic-themes/ folder, and the Desktop profile installs it straight from GitHub (pinned per commit):

git clone https://github.com/ihodorchenko/dsh-futuristic-themes.git
cd dsh-futuristic-themes
tools/install-desktop.sh              # install into the Desktop profile
tools/install-desktop.sh --update     # update to the latest GitHub commit
tools/install-desktop.sh --local      # development: link the working copy instead

Then open Settings → General → Futuristic themes. In-app plugin manager, dsh web installs, the manual profile edit and rollback are documented in docs/INSTALL.md.

Develop

NODE="$HOME/.dsh/dsh-runtimes/dsh-primary-runtime/dependencies/node/bin/node"
cd dsh-futuristic-themes
$NODE scripts/build.mjs          # derive tokens from src/themes/*.json → lib/client.js
$NODE scripts/build.mjs --check  # validate only
$NODE scripts/preview.mjs        # build/preview.html + one mock per theme
$NODE ../tools/audit-themes.mjs  # independent 159-check audit

lib/client.js is committed (no build step on the user's machine); the source template and per-theme data are in src/.

Compatibility

DeepSeek Harness Desktop 0.2.1-rc.5 and the matching dsh web; requires the host theme extension point (@deepseek-ai/dsh-client-ui-theme) and the settings.general.item slot. Tested in this environment only.

License

MIT © 2026 Ihar Khadorchanka.

The original design briefs in docs/design-briefs/ and the concept rendering are part of this repository and covered by the same license.