deepseek-harness-desktop

DeepSeek Harness Desktop

鈿狅笍 Community project; not an official release. DeepSeek Harness itself, the @deepseek-ai/* packages, and the official frontend are copyrighted by deepseek-ai and their contributors.

Run the official DeepSeek Harness web UI as a Windows desktop app 鈥?the same interface, the same server, ready with a double-click.

Why use it?

• 馃幆 Zero configuration: No Node.js installation or command line required. Install it, double-click it, and get the official UI鈥攏ot a replica or custom skin.
• 馃惓 Bundled server: The app hosts the official dsh server itself. If the web or CLI version is already running, the app automatically reuses it and shares the same session data.
• 馃攧 Automatic recovery: If an external server stops, the app takes over and restarts it within five seconds, then restores the page automatically.
• 馃枼 A proper desktop experience: System tray support, remembered window state, single-instance behavior, automatic crash recovery, and a clean menu-free window.
• 馃悑 Whale loading animation: The official whale is rendered with blue and white glowing dots, faithfully preserving details such as its belly, eye, and splash, with a gentle breathing motion.

Download

Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+Shift+I opens Developer Tools 路 Ctrl+R reloads 路 Ctrl+Shift+O opens the app in your browser. Closing the window keeps the app running in the system tray. Right-click the tray icon to quit or view app information.

Run from source

npm install && npm start      # Icons are auto-generated when missing; you can also run npm run icon manually

Other useful commands:

npm run dist                      # Build installer + archive + portable, then verify package integrity
npm run verify                    # Run package-integrity checks separately
npm run update:dsh                # Upgrade the official dsh packages and rebuild all distributions
npm run preview -- --open         # Preview the loading animation live in your browser

When the official dsh project publishes a new release, Dependabot automatically opens an upgrade PR and CI runs the Windows smoke test. After merging it, run npm run update:dsh to produce new distributions.

FAQ

• Antivirus warning: False positives are common for unsigned community applications. All source code is public, so you can audit it or build the app yourself.
• Do not keep the app in the system tray after closing the window: Set "closeToTray": false in settings.json inside the app data directory.
• The workspace picker does not open: Since 0.1.2-rc.1 the app defaults to the in-app browser-style picker ("directoryPicker": "browse"), avoiding the native dialog worker crash in Remote Desktop / remote-controlled sessions. Existing "native" settings are automatically migrated to "browse" on startup. Set "native" manually only if you need the Windows native dialog on a physical desktop session.
• Adding a workspace fails with a Chinese path: The official 0.1.1 series native directory picker had a UTF-16 truncation bug (reported upstream). 0.1.2-rc.1 inlined the official fix, and 0.1.5 replaces the manual byte loop with koffi's native str16 decoding, so the bug is gone at the root. The desktop packaging patch recognizes both states and stays idempotent. No action needed.
• Session data when upgrading to 0.1.5: Since official dsh 0.1.5 the session log format is V3. Opening an old conversation migrates it into a new generation file while keeping the original (session.v3.jsonl.zstd next to session.jsonl.zstd). New content is written only to the V3 file, which older app versions cannot read — so after downgrading, old history still opens but anything produced after the upgrade does not appear. Back up the sessions folder (e.g. %USERPROFILE%\.dsh\sessions) before a major upgrade.
• Use the latest official version: Run the latest official npx @deepseek-ai/dsh web; the desktop app will detect and reuse it automatically.

License

This project is open source under the MIT License.