dsh-desktop-kit

Self-owned desktop shell for DeepSeek Harness (DSH): a small plugin plus a native Tauri window over the harness web surface.

dsh web starts → the plugin spawns the shell on the served loopback URL → you get DSH in a real desktop window, with the browser tab still available as a second client. No fork, no repackaged runtime, no second profile — everything stays a plugin over your existing harness.

Why not the third-party shell?

dsh-desktop is great and was the blueprint. We rebuilt a smaller one for one concrete reason: real macOS fullscreen. Its window is frameless with a web-drawn title bar and never wires up setFullscreen — the maximize button is zoom, not a native fullscreen Space. This shell uses a plain decorated window, so the green traffic-light button and Ctrl+Cmd+F give you true macOS fullscreen out of the box.

Features (v0.1)

• Native window on the loopback web surface — same origin the browser uses, so the whole SPA and every plugin work unchanged (verified with dsh-rw).
• Real macOS fullscreen — decorated window, native fullscreen Space, no custom title bar needed.
• Single instance — a second launch focuses the existing window instead of opening another.
• Lifecycle contract — closing the window exits the shell with code 0, and the plugin shuts the harness down; plugin teardown kills the shell. No orphaned processes on either side.
• Graceful degradation — no shell binary found? The harness keeps serving the web UI in the browser, with an actionable log line.
• Small — system WebKit (WKWebView), no bundled Chromium; the shell binary is a few MB.
• External links that work — target="_blank" / cross-origin links are delegated to the system browser via the shell's kit_open_external command (a bare WKWebView renders them dead otherwise).
• Browser-style zoom — Cmd/Ctrl + = / - / 0 zooms the page (persisted), something a bare WKWebView does not offer.

Deliberately not in v0.1: tray, OS notifications, file panel, in-app updater, control channel. The architecture (control pipe over stdin/stdout, dshdctl: protocol) is documented in the blueprint and can grow later.

Architecture

dsh web  (your existing web profile)
  └─ dsh-desktop-kit (this plugin, inject: [webServer])
       └─ spawns dsh-desktop-kit <url> <title>   (the Tauri shell)
            └─ native WKWebView window on http://127.0.0.1:<port>
                 window closed → exit 0 → plugin shuts the harness down

The plugin resolves the shell binary in order: config.bin / DSH_DESKTOP_KIT_BIN → $DSH_HOME/bin/dsh-desktop-kit → PATH → ~/.local/bin/dsh-desktop-kit.

Install

Requires the dsh CLI and macOS (other platforms are untested but should work).

# 1. the plugin
dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-desktop-kit          # npm (once published)
# or from a checkout / GitHub release tarball:
dsh plugin --profile web add /path/to/dsh-desktop-kit

# 2. the shell binary (prebuilt on the Releases page, or build it yourself)
mkdir -p ~/.dsh/bin
cp dsh-desktop-kit ~/.dsh/bin/        # from the release download
# or: cd shell && cargo build --release && cp target/release/dsh-desktop-kit ~/.dsh/bin/

# 3. restart dsh web — the native window opens with it

To uninstall: dsh plugin --profile web remove dsh-desktop-kit and delete ~/.dsh/bin/dsh-desktop-kit.

Development

# plugin half (TypeScript)
pnpm install
pnpm build        # tsc → lib/
pnpm test         # vitest — spawn/exit/resolution logic, all fakes
pnpm typecheck

# shell half (Rust / Tauri v2)
cd shell
cargo build --release   # binary at target/release/dsh-desktop-kit

Install the built plugin into your harness for a live run:

dsh plugin --profile web remove dsh-desktop-kit 2>/dev/null
dsh plugin --profile web add /path/to/dsh-desktop-kit
cp shell/target/release/dsh-desktop-kit ~/.dsh/bin/
# restart dsh web

Configuration

Plugin config keys (defaults shown):

Key	Default	Meaning
bin	''	Explicit shell binary path; empty resolves $DSH_HOME/bin → PATH → ~/.local/bin. Also settable via DSH_DESKTOP_KIT_BIN.
title	'DeepSeek Harness'	Window title (argv[2] to the shell).

Shell argv: dsh-desktop-kit [url] [title] — defaults http://127.0.0.1:3080 and DeepSeek Harness. --selftest runs a scriptable native-fullscreen enter/exit check (exit 0 on pass); DSH_KIT_NO_SINGLE_INSTANCE=1 runs a side-by-side instance (selftest, dev).

Known limitations

• macOS is the only tested platform (WKWebView). Linux/Windows builds are unverified.
• Plugin reload while the harness stays up is not handled — restart dsh web after reinstalling.
• No close-to-tray: closing the window shuts the harness down (by design, matching the referenced behavior).

License

MIT