dsh-desktop-autostart-win

Windows sign-in autostart for the DeepSeek Harness desktop app. The plugin adds one page to Settings — Startup / 开机自启 — with a single switch.

Switch	Effect
On	Writes DeepSeek Harness = "<desktop app>.exe" under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run, and clears a previous "disabled" decision from Task Manager, so Windows launches the app after you sign in.
Off	Deletes that value, so the app no longer starts by itself.

Nothing is duplicated in the plugin config: the startup entry is the only stored state, so the page always reports what Windows will actually run.

Install

Requires DSH 0.2.2-rc.1 or newer (0.2.x) and Windows 10/11. Replace desktop with the profile you actually start DSH with.

This package is distributed from GitHub; there is no npm release.

From GitHub

This form needs Git on the machine (DSH checks the repository with git ls-remote before installing):

dsh plugin --profile desktop add github:nanwu98/dsh-desktop-autostart-win

Pin a release with #v1.0.0:

dsh plugin --profile desktop add github:nanwu98/dsh-desktop-autostart-win#v1.0.0

From the release tarball

No Git needed:

dsh plugin --profile desktop add https://github.com/nanwu98/dsh-desktop-autostart-win/releases/download/v1.0.0/dsh-desktop-autostart-win-1.0.0.tgz

From the plugin page

Open 插件 → 添加插件, paste the repository URL or the release tarball URL (a bare package name only works for registry packages), and install. Restart DSH if the page asks for it; then open 设置 → 开机自启.

How the app is found

The plugin never hard-codes an install path. It tries these sources in order and stops at the first existing executable:

Source	What it reads
Running desktop app	process.execPath when the Host is the desktop app itself
App Paths	App Paths\DeepSeek Harness.exe under HKCU and HKLM, 64- and 32-bit views
Install folders	%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs, %ProgramFiles%, %ProgramFiles(x86)% + the usual product folder names
Installer records	DisplayIcon, InstallLocation, UninstallString in the HKCU/HKLM uninstall keys

Only a real .exe is accepted, and node.exe, electron.exe and uninstallers are rejected. The Settings page shows which source matched, so you can tell why a path was chosen. A miss is retried on the next page load (the result is cached for one minute).

This means the switch still works from a plain dsh CLI session: the desktop app is found from the registry even though the CLI itself is node.exe.

The startup entry

Windows has two places that decide whether a startup entry runs: the Run key and Task Manager's approval record. The plugin writes the first and clears the second, so an entry that was disabled in Task Manager → Startup comes back when you turn the switch on. If the entry exists but is still disabled, the page says so instead of pretending it is on.

Administrator rights are not required: everything is per-user (HKCU) and nothing is written machine-wide.

Permissions and privacy

Reads, only to find the app and report state:

• HKCU\...\CurrentVersion\Run and ...\Explorer\StartupApproved\Run
• App Paths under HKCU/HKLM (64- and 32-bit views)
• Uninstall records under HKCU/HKLM (only the display name, icon, install folder, and uninstall command)

Writes, only when you use the switch:

• adds or deletes the DeepSeek Harness value in the per-user Run key
• deletes the matching StartupApproved value so Windows does not skip it

The plugin makes no network requests, writes no files, and collects no telemetry. The detected path and registry values are returned only to the local Settings page (the routes reject non-loopback peers and are read-only except for the one boolean switch).

Uninstall

Turn the switch off first if you no longer want the app to start at sign-in, then remove the bundle:

dsh plugin --profile desktop remove dsh-desktop-autostart-win

Removing the bundle deletes the routes and the page. It does not clear the startup entry.

Development

The package is plain ESM JavaScript with no build step and no runtime dependencies. Run the unit tests with:

npm test

The tests cover the registry-output parser, encoding fallback, path cleanup, approval record decoding, and the executable-name filter. They do not touch the real registry.

Compatibility

• DSH >=0.2.2-rc.1 <0.3.0 (declared in engines.dsh; DSH refuses versions outside the range before installing)
• Windows 10/11 (dsh.bundle.platforms is ["win32"], so other systems are rejected instead of showing a dead switch)
• Node.js 22+ (the runtime bundled with DSH)

Plugin index

This repository also publishes a format-1 plugin index, so the package can be discovered from the built-in Discover tab:

• jsDelivr (recommended; works on networks where raw.githubusercontent.com is blocked): https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/nanwu98/dsh-desktop-autostart-win@main/index.json
• raw GitHub: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nanwu98/dsh-desktop-autostart-win/main/index.json

Add it under 插件 → 发现 → 索引源 → 添加索引源. The Discover tab needs the experimental plugin-market bundle enabled in this DSH release.

License

MIT. This package is independent of other plugins with a similar name; it manages the per-user Run key rather than the Startup folder.