Introduction

Tasks in DeepSeek Harness (DSH) can run for extended periods or wait in the background for approval or responses. If you are accustomed to using the web profile in the browser to use DSH, switching back to the window after a task completes will be inefficient.

Below is an introduction to dsh-notify-win. It is a Windows notification plugin for DSH that uses native Windows toasts and taskbar flashing to alert you when a task completes, context compression finishes, or input is required.

Plugin Positioning

dsh-notify-win is positioned as: Native Windows toast + taskbar flash for DeepSeek Harness when a task finishes or your input is needed.

The repository maintainer is Andyqwe44, and the license is MIT. The source code is available at:

https://github.com/Andyqwe44/dsh-notify-win

Core Capabilities

dsh-notify-win mainly covers three types of notifications:

  1. Task Completion: Triggered when the root agent becomes idle.
  2. Context Compression Completion: Triggered when session/event → compaction/end.
  3. Input Required: Triggered during approval or ask_user_question.

The specific behaviors it provides include:

  • Native Windows 10/11 system-style toasts displayed in the bottom right corner.
  • Triggers taskbar flashing using FlashWindowEx when DSH is running in the background.
  • Click-to-focus: Opens DSH and switches to the corresponding session when the toast is clicked.
  • Single-choice question toasts: Native dropdown boxes with a maximum of 5 options, accompanied by a custom answer text input field, as well as Cancel and Send buttons.
  • Timeout flashing fallback: If an interactive toast is closed by the system timeout, taskbar flashing is still triggered.
  • A hero banner featuring the DeepSeek Harness logo, adapted for both light and dark themes.
  • Fire-and-forget: Does not register any services, tools, or settings namespaces.

Notifications are deduplicated per session. dedupMs defaults to 1500 ms.

Installation and Verification

First, confirm that pnpm is available in your environment. If not, you can run:

corepack enable

Install the plugin:

dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-notify-win

After installation, check the configuration to confirm that it has been added to the DSH web profile:

dsh --profile web --dump-config

Look for an identifier similar to the following in the output:

# == dsh-notify-win
- id: dsh-notify-win

Testing Notifications

Restart DSH:

dsh web

After completing any task, you should see the first notification. The first notification will self-register a branded toast identity.

If the toast header still displays DeepSeekHarness and there is no icon, restart the Explorer process:

Stop-Process -Name explorer -Force; Start-Process explorer

Disabling the Plugin

If you need to temporarily disable notifications, set the following in cordis.patch.yml:

- id: dsh-notify-win
  disabled: true

A restart is required after applying installation or disable changes. The web profile disables HMR by default.

Runtime Environment

Verified runtime requirements are as follows:

  • Windows 10/11.
  • PowerShell 7 or Windows PowerShell 5.1; if only 5.1 is available, it will be used automatically as a fallback.
  • Interactive question toasts require .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).
  • done/compact style toasts do not require .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).

Limitations and Considerations

These limitations stem from the plugin’s behavior itself:

  • Native toast text is relatively compact, offering approximately 4 lines of display space; long content will be truncated.
  • Native selection dropdowns may collapse when the pointer moves to the popup; if the system subsequently closes them due to a timeout, taskbar flashing will still alert you.
  • FlashWindowEx uses the system’s warm-pulse highlight and cannot have custom colors.
  • Windows does not flash the foreground window; taskbar buttons only flash when DSH is running in the background.
  • Cancelling a running turn also transitions the state to idle; therefore, tasks cancelled in this way will still trigger a done toast.
  • Notifications are deduplicated per session within the dedupMs window, defaulting to 1500 ms.
  • The plugin does not register any services, tools, or settings namespaces.

Security Recommendations

dsh-notify-win is launched by DSH to run related processes with the permissions of the current DSH process. Before installation, it is recommended to review the source code, license, and actual trigger behavior before deciding whether to add it to your own web profile.

Conclusion

The value of dsh-notify-win is focused: On Windows 10/11, it ensures that the three states—task completion, context compression completion, and waiting for input—are noticed in a more timely manner. It does not alter the main workflow of DSH but is added simply as a notification channel.

Source code and issue tracker are available on GitHub:

https://github.com/Andyqwe44/dsh-notify-win