dsh-system-vitals

A live status line for DeepSeek Harness. One row inside the composer's tool cluster showing CPU load · CPU temperature · memory · disk · upload/download throughput, on Linux, macOS and Windows. Sampled every second, zero runtime dependencies.

No task manager, no window switching, no scrolling back through the chat: the numbers sit exactly where you type.

Highlights

• One compact line — CPU · temperature · memory · disk · upload · download, next to the submit button.
• Zero dependencies — Linux reads kernel counters (/proc, /sys) directly; macOS uses the built-in sysctl/netstat; Windows reads performance counters through one long-lived PowerShell child. No native module, no administrator rights.
• Rigid cells, no jitter — each reading is a fixed cell (label 4ch + number 3ch + unit 3ch), so 9% → 10% never shifts the strip.
• Three significant digits at most — the unit is rescaled (B/s → K/s → M/s → G/s) instead of widening a cell.
• Threshold colors — CPU/memory warn at 75%, error at 90%; disk at 85% / 95%; temperature at 80°C / 92°C.
• Whole-cell clipping when space runs short — the leading readings survive, and the cut always falls between two cells, so no half-drawn value is ever shown.
• Theme and locale aware — only --dsw-alias-* design tokens, Chinese and English built in.

Install

Requires DSH around 0.2.1-rc.2, Node ≥ 20, and a profile with the Web UI (dsh web).

dsh plugin --profile web add github:abyss2021/dsh-system-vitals

Refresh the page afterwards. Uninstall:

dsh plugin --profile web remove dsh-system-vitals

• Release notes live in GitHub Releases.
• From a local checkout: dsh plugin --profile web add /path/to/dsh-system-vitals.
• Once an npm release exists, dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-system-vitals also works. Keep the two commands out of the same code block: the plugin-store install detector treats two executable candidates as ambiguous and then shows none.

The package is a bundle plus a Client half: the Host side samples and serves one same-origin HTTP route, the Client side registers a React component into conversation.input.right (the composer card's .trailing cluster, on the submit button's row) and one into settings.section. There is no build step — client.js is a browser module the Harness module loader executes directly.

What it shows

The Host samples once a second; the Client polls GET /system-vitals/api/snapshot every two seconds. Anything a platform cannot read is returned as null and rendered as —; no value is invented.

Per-platform notes

• Linux: plain file reads — no subprocess.
• macOS: short sysctl/netstat calls plus Node APIs; the temperature probe is expensive, so it refreshes every fifth sample and is cached between them.
• Windows: one long-lived PowerShell child streams one JSON line per second (the performance counters already report percentages and per-second byte rates, so no deltas are needed). If the child exits it restarts after a five-second backoff and the last sample is reused meanwhile.
• Any other platform falls back to a minimal Node-only reading (memory, load, uptime); CPU load and throughput render —.

Usage

Reordering

Every reading is an independently selectable cell:

• Drag a reading to another slot; slots swap live while dragging and the order is committed on drop.
• Keyboard: focus a cell with Tab and move it with ← / → (Enter / Space selects).
• Persistence: the order is stored in localStorage under dsh-system-vitals:order and survives reloads.

Cells are equal width and dragging leaves no placeholder, so the strip's width and position are identical in every order — only which reading occupies which slot changes.

Choosing which readings appear

Settings → System Vitals lists every reading with a switch:

• Uncheck a reading to hide it; a live preview shows the resulting strip.
• Show all restores everything; the Order group offers Reset order.
• Preferences live in localStorage (dsh-system-vitals:visible / :order) and survive reloads.

Visibility is your choice, never the window's: resizing never changes what is shown or in which order. On a narrow window, hide the readings you do not care about.

Placement, width and wrapping

The strip registers in conversation.input.right, inside the .trailing flex cluster with the submit button. The host row is flex-wrap: wrap and measures itself (observeControlRow) to decide whether the model seat goes compact — the strip's width counts toward that measurement, while .trailing is flex: none. The strip must therefore yield, or the row wraps and pushes the permission control and the submit button away: it is capped at the row's leftover width and clips its own cells beyond that.

The cap is measured at runtime rather than hardcoded: a ResizeObserver reads the row's content box — the same box the host compares its own "does it fit" sum against — subtracts every control outside the strip's own ancestor branch plus the gaps, and keeps an 8px safety margin. The model seat counts at its compact width, because the host collapses it to an icon when space runs short; planning for its expanded label starved the strip and then prevented the host from ever compacting.

The important part is when the cap takes effect: it is written to the element's style from inside the observer callback, not routed through setState. A React state update is committed in a later task, after the frame has already been painted — so every resize step used to paint one frame with the strip at its old width, and that overflow squashed the row's shrinkable native controls or pushed the cluster onto a second line before snapping back. Writing the style in the callback keeps the correction inside the same rendering update, so no painted frame shows an over-wide strip. (Regression numbers are in CHANGELOG.md, entries 1.3.11 and 1.3.13.)

Typical behaviour (row → visible readings; the numbers drift a little with the font and the host version): 396px→1; 500px→2; 620px→4; 900px and above→6. The strip is always one line: when it does not fit it clips at the right edge, so the leading readings survive — the head of your own order — and the cut always falls between two cells.

Configuration

Override the row's config in the profile patch layer:

- insert:
    - id: system-vitals
      name: dsh-system-vitals
      config:
        intervalMs: 1000   # Host sampling interval, 250–10000 ms; network rates derive from it

Compatibility

• Platform: full support on Linux; macOS and Windows cover CPU, memory, disk and throughput, with temperature depending on the model and permissions.
• DSH: developed and verified on 0.2.1-rc.2, using only stable webServer.register, ctx.slots.register/inject and ctx.locale.register APIs.
• Node: ≥ 20 (fs.statfs).

Security

GET /system-vitals/api/snapshot is an unauthenticated, local-only route served by the DSH web listener (bound to 127.0.0.1 by default). Any local process can read /proc anyway, so this adds no real exposure — but do not expose the DSH Web UI publicly (--host 0.0.0.0) with this plugin installed.

Layout

dsh-system-vitals/
├── package.json          # dsh.bundle / dsh.client / exports
├── cordis.patch.yml      # inserts the plugin row
├── index.js              # Host half: sampling and HTTP route
├── client.js             # Client half: the strip and the settings page
├── platform/             # linux / darwin / win32 samplers
├── locale/{zh,en}.json   # display metadata for the plugin inventory
├── docs/preview.png      # screenshot
├── icon.svg              # plugin icon
└── CHANGELOG.md / README.md / README.en.md / LICENSE

Development and publishing

node --check index.js
node --check client.js
for file in platform/*.js; do node --check "$file"; done
npm pack --dry-run

Reinstall a local checkout after changes:

dsh plugin --profile web remove dsh-system-vitals
dsh plugin --profile web add /home/abyss/app/system-vitals

Release flow: bump package.json, update CHANGELOG.md, commit, tag vX.Y.Z, then publish a GitHub Release for that tag. .github/workflows/publish.yml verifies the tag against package.json and runs npm publish --provenance only when the repository has an NPM_TOKEN secret; without it the npm step is skipped with a notice (releases are GitHub-only today; nothing is published to npm).

License

MIT