dsh-better-restart

Lovstudio's in-place application restart plugin for the DeepSeek Harness web surface. The settings header gains a Restart app action that re-boots the whole application in place (reloading the current tab, not opening a new one), with a confirmation dialog that watches running conversations live.

This is a Lovstudio plugin, not a DeepSeek-AI package, distributed under the @lovstudio scope.

What it does

• Host half exposes two webServer routes:
  • POST /better-restart/status — { running, active } (how many agent loops are mid-turn).
  • POST /better-restart — restarts the application, preferring the launcher's appRestart service and falling back to a root-include recompose.
• Client half (settings-header button):
  • Confirmation dialog that polls agent activity live (1.5s). With conversations running it reports the count and gates the restart behind an explicit acknowledgement; without running conversations the restart passes straight through.
  • In-flight spinner + disabled button while restarting; the current tab reloads on reconnect.
  • A betterRestartUi Cordis service exposing the same status() and restart() operations to other browser plugins.

The plugin is completely runtime and self-contained: it reaches DSH capabilities through the injected Cordis ctx only (webServer, agents, appRestart), and the client page reaches the host through plain fetch to those routes — no Remote assembly, no build-time transforms. It has no package dependencies beyond node builtins.

Install

Prerequisites: Node.js 22.19+ or 24+, pnpm 11 (corepack enable or npm i -g pnpm) — dsh plugin forwards to pnpm inside the profile directory.

From a DeepSeek Harness source checkout (recommended — you get the harness source too):

git clone --depth 1 --branch dsh-v0.1.2-rc.1 https://github.com/deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness.git
cd deepseek-harness && pnpm install && pnpm run build
pnpm dsh plugin --profile web add -w github:lovstudio/dsh-better-restart#v0.1.4
pnpm dsh web

Without a checkout (npx; compiled harness only):

npx @deepseek-ai/dsh plugin --profile web add -w github:lovstudio/dsh-better-restart#v0.1.4
npx @deepseek-ai/dsh web

How the restart happens

Two mechanisms, in order of preference:

1. appRestart — a launcher-provided service that re-boots the process. dsh 0.1.2-rc.1 provides none; this is the path a future or embedding launcher takes, and the route answers 204.
2. Root-include recompose — the fallback that makes the button work under plain dsh web. The loader's root cordis:include entry is disabled and re-enabled, which re-reads the composed cordis.yml plus the user patch layers and restarts every plugin under it, the web server included. The node process itself survives, so the terminal that launched dsh web keeps owning it. The route answers 202 {"mode":"recompose"} and only then tears the tree down — the response is held until its socket closes, because a recompose that races the flush reaches the browser as a transport failure rather than an accepted restart.

An app with neither lever answers 503 with that reason, the settings action shows a copyable failure instead of pretending to restart, and any plugin driving this service — the plugin marketplace, for one — sees the same rejection.

Because the process is reused, a recompose re-reads configuration and loads newly installed plugins, but Node's ESM cache means edited source of an already-loaded module is picked up only through the profile's own HMR watcher.

web is the profile dsh web boots. The tag pins a commit whose lib/ is prebuilt and committed, so nothing is compiled on your machine. Verified on 2026-09-05 against dsh-v0.1.2-rc.1 in both forms, including the recompose fallback end to end in the browser. Remove with dsh plugin --profile web remove @lovstudio/dsh-better-restart.

The client half (dsh.client) is served to the page automatically by the client module system once the plugin is composed — no rebuild of the web application is needed.

Use

1. Start the web UI: dsh web.
2. Open the settings header → Restart app.
3. Confirm; the app restarts in place and the current tab reloads.

Local development

Keep this checkout outside the DeepSeek Harness repository. Install and build it here, then link the package into an isolated development profile:

pnpm install
pnpm run watch

DSH_HOME=/Users/mark/.dsh-lov-dev pnpm --dir /path/to/deepseek-harness dsh plugin --profile web add -w link:/path/to/dsh-better-restart

The Host consumes the generated index.js, while the browser module system consumes lib/client.js. Client-only rebuilds are detected by the Harness Client HMR watcher; Host, manifest, patch, and bundle-membership changes require a profile restart. The package build does not import a Harness tsconfig or workspace source path.

Notes

• Requires webServer and agents (both from @deepseek-ai/dsh-base); appRestart and loader are each optional, and the route reports when neither is there.
• Copy lives under @lovstudio/dsh-better-restart (zh/en), auto-registered to the better-restart-ui locale namespace.

License

MIT