DeepSeek Harness Desktop

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An Electron-based Windows desktop app that opens the DeepSeek Harness Web GUI
(default http://127.0.0.1:3080).

What is DeepSeek Harness (dsh)

DeepSeek Harness (dsh) is an open-source agent harness developed by DeepSeek AI. Repo：https://github.com/deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness

System Requirements (read before installing)

Runtime environment (end users)

The installer is not code-signed (Authenticode); Windows SmartScreen may warn
about an "unknown publisher" — choose Run anyway.

Do not copy or back up %USERPROFILE%\.dsh with a tool that dereferences
symlinks. The Harness maintains .dsh\profiles\node_modules as a symlink
farm and re-points it to the bundled tree on every launch. If a real directory
ends up where a symlink belongs, startup aborts with
... exists and is not a symlink; remove it so dsh can manage the installation fallback. Deleting .dsh\profiles\node_modules lets the next launch rebuild it.

Environment variables (optional)

Optional extras

Development / build environment

Features

• Opens the Harness UI in its own window (single instance; launching again just focuses the existing window)
• Auto-start local service: when http://127.0.0.1:3080 is not running, the app starts the bundled Harness directly with the bundled Node runtime — no npx, no registry access, no system Node; the service started by the app is stopped when the app exits (externally running services are left alone)
• Starting animation: while the service is not ready and no error has occurred, the window shows "Starting…" with an animated dot-matrix rendition of the official whale icon; the error page (with details) only appears on real failures
• Voice Input (STT): click the microphone icon in the chat composer or press Alt+V to record speech, automatically transcribed into text using Google Vertex AI (gemini-3.5-flash-lite) and appended into the input box
• Local Server & STT panel in Settings: open Settings in the sidebar and choose "Local Server & STT" to see the Harness service status, auto-start toggle, and voice input options (e.g. auto-send on speech completion)
• No menu bar ("File/View/Help" hidden); keyboard shortcuts preserved: Ctrl+R reload, Ctrl+ / Ctrl− / Ctrl+0 zoom, F11 fullscreen, Ctrl+Shift+I DevTools
• Offline error page with automatic retry every 5 seconds
• External links always open in the system browser; the window never leaves the Harness site

App settings are stored in %APPDATA%\DeepSeek Harness\settings.json.

Run (development)

npm install
npm start

To point the app at a Harness instance on a different address:

$env:DSH_URL = "http://127.0.0.1:3080"
npm start

Build the Windows installer

npm run dist

Before dist, two staging scripts run automatically (both idempotent):

1. scripts/fetch-node.js — downloads the pinned Node.js runtime
   (v22.23.2 win-x64) from nodejs.org, verifies its SHA-256 checksum against
   the official SHASUMS256.txt, and unpacks it into vendor/node.
2. scripts/fetch-harness.js — installs a pinned pnpm into vendor/pnpm, then
   resolves @deepseek-ai/dsh@0.1.1-rc.1 into vendor/harness and verifies the
   result (entry point present, peer dependencies complete).

Both directories ship inside the installer via extraResources
(resources/node and resources/harness), which is what lets the app boot the
Harness with no download and no dependency resolution on the user's machine.

To move to a newer Harness release, change HARNESS_SPEC in
scripts/fetch-harness.js, delete vendor/harness, and rebuild. Pin the newest
release rather than an older one: every @deepseek-ai/* child is a caret range,
so an older top-level pin still resolves today's children and yields a mixed tree.

Outputs go to dist/:

• DeepSeek Harness Setup x.x.x.exe — NSIS installer (choose install directory, create desktop shortcut)
• DeepSeek Harness x.x.x.exe — portable edition, no installation required

Package without generating an installer (for quick checks):

npm run pack

Project structure

dsh-desktop/
├── package.json          # dependencies, scripts, electron-builder config
├── scripts/
│   ├── fetch-node.js     # downloads & verifies the bundled Node.js runtime (SHA-256), idempotent
│   └── fetch-harness.js  # stages pnpm + the pinned Harness dependency tree, idempotent
├── vendor/               # build output, git-ignored; regenerated by the scripts above
│   ├── node/             # bundled Node.js 22 LTS runtime (shipped in the installer)
│   ├── pnpm/             # pinned pnpm used only at build time (not shipped)
│   └── harness/          # resolved @deepseek-ai/dsh tree (shipped in the installer)
├── src/
│   ├── main.js           # main process: window, service management (auto-start/monitor/stop), IPC
│   ├── harness-update.js # Harness version reporting (pinned builds never self-update)
│   ├── voice-stt.js      # Google Vertex STT (gemini-3.5-flash-lite) audio transcription service
│   ├── preload.js        # preload script (secure contextBridge)
│   ├── overlay.js        # Voice input button & Local Server panel injected into the GUI
│   ├── start.html        # starting screen (dot-matrix whale swimming animation)
│   └── error.html        # offline error page when startup fails
└── build/
    ├── icon.png            # app icon (rendered from the official DeepSeek Harness favicon.svg)
    └── icon-render.html    # icon render source (kept for regeneration)

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.