dsh-desktop-app

Open the DeepSeek Harness Web UI as a standalone desktop app window — from inside a DSH session.

中文说明 | English

A DeepSeek Harness plugin that registers one host tool, desktop_app. It turns the Web GUI into a window that looks and behaves like native software: no browser tabs, no address bar, no bookmark bar, its own taskbar entry and icon.

It uses your existing Chromium-family browser in --app mode — no Electron, no extra runtime, nothing to download. A small notification-area host keeps the app reachable after the window is closed, so closing the window no longer means stopping the service.

Why

By default DSH opens in a browser tab, mixed in with your other tabs. --app mode gives you a dedicated window instead, which is what you actually want for something you keep open all day.

System tray

A browser window cannot minimise itself to the notification area, and closing it takes its process with it — so tray residency needs a separate long-lived process. The generated launcher starts one small PowerShell host (tray-host.ps1 + tray-host.cs, no extra runtime) before opening the window.

| What you do | What happens | |---|---| | Double-click the tray icon | Window restored (or opened, if you closed it) | | Right-click → Minimise to tray | Window hidden; the service keeps running | | Right-click → Open DeepSeek Harness | Opens the window again with a freshly read token | | Right-click → Restart the local service | Runs the detached restart helper | | Right-click → Quit tray host | Stops the tray host (the service keeps running) | | Close the window with X | Window closes, the service keeps running, and the tray host says so once |

If the dsh-schedule-panel plugin is installed, its panel also offers a “收进托盘” (minimise to tray) button: the page cannot hide a native window, so it drops a request file (tray-command.txt) that the tray host picks up within a second.

The icon defaults to the browser's own; drop a tray.ico next to lib/desktop.js (or point install at one with icon) to brand it.

What can't be done, and why

• The X button cannot be redefined from outside. Subclassing the window procedure across processes (SetWindowLongPtr on another process's window) returns ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED (5) on Windows 10/11. Verified; the code does not attempt it.
• beforeunload confirmations do not appear in a programmatically opened --app window — Chromium suppresses them. Use the tray button or the tray icon instead; both are deterministic.

Install

# from GitHub
dsh plugin --profile web add github:MARIOMLY/dsh-desktop-app

# from a local checkout
dsh plugin --profile web add /absolute/path/to/dsh-desktop-app

Then restart dsh web.

Verify it loaded:

dsh --profile web --dump-config | grep desktop-app

github: installs need github.com to be reachable, and pnpm will ask you to allow the prepare build script if the package has one. This plugin has no build step and no runtime dependencies, so npm/registry installs are the smoothest path.

Usage

Just ask, in any DSH session:

Make this open like a normal desktop app.

The agent calls desktop_app for you. Or be explicit about the action:

| Action | What it does | |---|---| | status | Reports the live web port, the detected browser, the Desktop directory, and whether the shortcut is installed. Start here if something looks wrong. | | install | Writes the launcher and creates the Desktop shortcut. | | remove | Deletes the shortcut and the launcher. | | open | Opens the app window right now, without installing anything. | | restart | Restarts the DSH server itself and reopens the app window. Detached and delayed, so your reply is delivered before the server goes down. |

Optional parameters:

| Parameter | Meaning | |---|---| | browser | A browser id (edge, chrome, brave, vivaldi, opera) or an absolute path to a Chromium-family executable. Defaults to the first one detected. | | icon | Absolute path to a .ico file for the shortcut. Defaults to the browser's own icon. | | shortcutName | Shortcut file name on the Desktop. Defaults to DeepSeek Harness.lnk. | | delaySeconds | restart only. Seconds to wait before stopping the server. Defaults to 15, capped at 300. | | closeOldWindows | restart only. Once the new app window has appeared, close the app-mode windows that existed before the restart. Defaults to true. Only DSH app windows are closed — a normal browser window is never touched, because closing it would take your other tabs with it. |

Restarting

restart is the one action with a twist: it has to stop the server that is running it. It writes a helper, starts it outside this server's job object, and verifies it is actually alive before reporting success.

1. the helper waits delaySeconds (15 by default) so the reply reaches you first;
2. it stops whatever holds the port;
3. it waits for the port to be released;
4. it relaunches through the launcher — hidden console, app window when ready;
5. it closes the app-mode windows that were on screen (closeOldWindows, on by default) — see below;
6. if the launcher cannot bring the server up, it falls back to a visible console so you are never left with nothing.

Three things worth knowing if you fork this:

• A plain child_process.spawn is not enough. DSH manages its children through a Windows job object, so a spawned helper inherits job membership and is torn down with it — observed in practice as a process that appears and then exits before executing a single line, while the action still reported success. The helper is therefore created with Win32_Process.Create, which parents it to WmiPrvSE.exe, outside the job. The action then polls for the helper's first log line and fails loudly if it never shows up.
• Old windows are closed before the replacement is created, on purpose. With the server stopped, every DSH window on screen is dead by definition and the new one cannot exist yet, so the step is race-free. An earlier version waited for a "new" window handle to appear and only then closed the old ones — that proved unreliable, because Chromium sometimes focuses or reuses the existing app window instead of creating a new one, so no new handle ever appeared and nothing was closed.
• The window filter is deliberately conservative. Only titles containing the app marker and no browser-name marker qualify. A browser window holding the DSH tab plus other tabs is skipped, because closing it would lose the user's other work. Note the marker uses Microsoft rather than Microsoft Edge: the real Edge title contains a character that renders as ? in consoles.

The helper log is at ~/.dsh/desktop-app/restart.log.

What gets created

~/.dsh/desktop-app/launch.ps1     the launcher (regenerate with `install`)
~/.dsh/desktop-app/start-server.cmd  the recorded start command
~/.dsh/desktop-app/restart.ps1    the detached restart helper, written by `restart`
~/.dsh/desktop-app/tray-host.ps1  the notification-area host
~/.dsh/desktop-app/tray-host.cs   its C# companion (Win32 window + NotifyIcon)
~/.dsh/desktop-app/tray-host.cmd  quoting-safe launcher for the host
~/.dsh/desktop-app/tray.ico       the tray icon (optional; browser icon otherwise)
~/.dsh/desktop-app/tray-url.txt   the tokenised boot URL, for reopening the window
~/.dsh/desktop-app/tray-command.txt  request file the web page writes to hide the window
~/.dsh/desktop-app/server.log     server output, only when the launcher had to start DSH
~/.dsh/desktop-app/launcher.log   launcher diagnostics
~/.dsh/desktop-app/restart.log    restart helper diagnostics
~/.dsh/desktop-app/tray.log       tray host diagnostics
<Desktop>/DeepSeek Harness.lnk    the shortcut, pointing at the launcher

remove stops the tray host and deletes the shortcut, launch.ps1, start-server.cmd and the tray files; the logs are left behind on purpose.

How it works

The generated launcher is deliberately small and boring:

1. If the web port is already listening → open the app window. Done.
2. Otherwise start the recorded DSH command with --no-open (so you don't also get a duplicate browser tab), wait for the listener, then read the tokenised URL the server prints at boot:

   dsh web: http://127.0.0.1:<port>/?token=...
   

3. Open that URL in --app mode. Visiting it mints the signed auth cookie, so the window works even when the browser has no cookie yet — the usual cause of a mysterious 401 authentication required page.

The start command is captured from the live DSH process (process.execPath + process.argv[1]) at install time, so re-run install if you move DSH or switch from npx to a global install.

Requirements and caveats

• Windows is required for install / remove (they create a .lnk through WScript.Shell). status and open work on macOS and Linux too.
• A Chromium-family browser must be installed. Edge ships with Windows, so this is normally satisfied.
• This plugin drives an existing browser. It is not the official Electron desktop app — DSH reserves a desktop profile for that, and it is distributed separately.
• The generated launcher is written ASCII-only on purpose. Windows PowerShell 5.1 reads .ps1 files using the ANSI code page unless the file carries a UTF-8 BOM, so non-ASCII comments can corrupt parsing. If you fork this, keep it plain ASCII.
• The server is started from a generated .cmd file rather than cmd /c "<quoted path>" ... > log. When the first character after /c is a quote, cmd.exe's quote-stripping rules make the whole command — redirect included — mis-parse, and it fails silently: no output file, no console, nothing.
• The temporary script that creates the .lnk is written with a UTF-8 BOM, because it embeds user-supplied paths. Without the BOM a non-ASCII icon path is decoded as ANSI and comes back corrupted, leaving the shortcut with a default icon.

Implementation notes for forkers

Two bugs found while building this are preserved as comments in lib/desktop.js, because both are easy to reintroduce:

1. cmd /c quote-stripping. A launcher that "does nothing when clicked", with no log file written, is the signature of a failed redirect — not a missing file.
2. BOM-less .ps1 carrying a user path. Anything generated that embeds a path must be written with a BOM, or the path is silently mangled.

Verify

status is the intended entry point. A healthy install looks like this:

desktop_app -> status
  platform        : win32
  web port        : 3080
  base URL        : http://127.0.0.1:3080/
  browser         : Microsoft Edge (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe)
  desktop dir     : C:\Users\you\Desktop
  shortcut        : C:\Users\you\Desktop\DeepSeek Harness.lnk [installed]
  launcher        : C:\Users\you\.dsh\desktop-app\launch.ps1 [present]

Uninstall

dsh plugin --profile web remove dsh-desktop-app

and delete the shortcut from your Desktop (or run the remove action first).

License

MIT © MARIOMLY