Preface

The core design philosophy of DeepSeek Harness (DSH) is pluginization, aiming to integrate various external capabilities through a unified interface. DSH itself does not directly integrate desktop design tools, but through the MCP protocol, developers can connect local applications (such as Paper Desktop) into DSH. dsh-paper-design is exactly this bridge: it registers Paper Desktop MCP tools as DSH native tools and provides capabilities such as screenshot forwarding, design guidance, and OAuth authentication.

Plugin Overview

  • Plugin Name: dsh-paper-design
  • Maintainer: try-works
  • Positioning: Paper Design MCP bridge as a DeepSeek Harness bundle
  • Category: Fun Dress-Up
  • License: MIT

Installation and Enablement

Installing this plugin requires modifying the package.json configuration file of the DSH Profile by adding the package to the dependency list and the bundle list.

Add the following content to ~/.dsh/profiles/<name>/package.json:

{
  "dependencies": {
    "@try-works/dsh-paper-design": "^0.1.4"
  },
  "dsh": {
    "profile": {
      "bundles": [
        "@deepseek-ai/dsh-base",
        "@try-works/dsh-paper-design"
      ]
    }
  }
}

After the configuration, run pnpm install in the Profile directory to install dependencies, and restart the running DSH process. The process must be restarted after configuration changes for them to take effect.

Core Features

This plugin mainly provides the following capabilities:

  1. Native Tool Mapping: Registers Paper Desktop MCP tools (such as get_basic_info, get_screenshot, write_html, etc.) as DSH native paper_* tools. The MCP input Schema is normalized into the JSON-Schema subset required by DSH.
  2. Image Screenshot Forwarding: Image blocks generated by get_screenshot are decoded and persisted via ctx.attachments. The image is then sent to image-capable model routes, ensuring the screenshot can be recognized and processed.
  3. Cursor-style Design Guidance: The plugin injects Cursor-like design guidance rules as part of the system prompt and injects the full paper-mcp-instructions during the first two Agent rounds after connection/reconnection.
  4. Skill Registration: Provides three skill modules:
    • code-to-design
    • design-to-code
    • paper-design (provides a tool reference index with progressive disclosure)

Commands and Authentication

The plugin provides a command-line interface to manage connection and authentication status.

  • Reconnect Command: /paper-reconnect
    • Used to reinitialize the MCP session after restarting Paper Desktop, clearing the guidance cache and resetting the injection budget for early rounds.
  • Authentication Management:
    • /paper-auth-status: View the current authentication mode (unauthenticated/OAuth), configuration status, expiration time, and error information.
    • /paper-auth-login: Start the OAuth 2.1 authorization flow.
    • /paper-auth-logout: Clear stored tokens.

The plugin supports MCP OAuth authentication (based on standards such as RFC 8414/OIDC), and tokens are persisted in $DSH_HOME/paper-design/oauth.json.

Notes

  1. Runtime Environment: Ensure Paper Desktop is running and a file is open, because the MCP server runs inside the desktop application.
  2. DSH Dependencies: The DSH configuration must include @deepseek-ai/dsh-base and its mounted services (tools, systemPrompt, attachments, skills, commands, llm, agent, scope, session).
  3. Image Support: The screenshot feature depends on image-capable model routes; text-only models cannot process screenshots.
  4. Restart Requirement: The DSH process must be restarted after any configuration change.

References