Foreword

DeepSeek Harness (DSH) adopts the architectural principle that “everything is a plugin.” For developers who need to switch between browser-side and desktop-side contexts, managing independent Tauri application instances, shortcuts, and shutdown flows usually requires manual operations. The DSH Tauri Launcher plugin abstracts desktop startup, shutdown, quit confirmation, and shortcut management into a standard Web plugin. Users can complete these operations directly in the DSH settings panel without leaving the Web interface.

What Is This

DSH Tauri Launcher is a DSH plugin maintained by cilis. It addresses the problem of managing Tauri desktop application instances in a Web environment, and uses a plugin-based approach to implement desktop launch toggle, shortcut synchronization, and status visualization.

Core Features

The plugin provides the following capabilities:

  1. Desktop startup toggle: Launch or exit the desktop application with one click in the Web settings panel, with immediate feedback after clicking and second-level status synchronization.
  2. Shortcut synchronization: Automatically create a desktop shortcut when enabled and automatically delete it when disabled; manual recreation is supported while running.
  3. Shutdown confirmation dialog: Display a confirmation dialog before shutting down, and remind users that the shortcut will be deleted.
  4. Status visualization: Display running (green), stopped (gray), unknown status (yellow), or error status, along with diagnostic information.
  5. Dark mode support: Adapt interface colors to DSH theme tokens and support automatic switching between light and dark modes.
  6. Settings navigation display icon: Replaces the default gear icon with a vector-drawn icon that remains sharp at any scale.

Installation and Enablement

The installation command is as follows. Replace <profile> in the command with the name of the actual profile you are using (for example, web):

dsh plugin --profile web add github:cilis/dsh-tauri-launcher

After installation, restart the DSH Web process. The “Desktop Startup” section will appear in the settings panel. You can verify whether the plugin is active by running the dsh --profile web --dump-config command.

Typical Usage

  1. Go to DSH Settings → Desktop Startup.
  2. Configure the following parameters:
    • launcherExe: Absolute path to the desktop application executable file. Leave empty to enable automatic detection.
    • launcherDirs: List of candidate executable directories. Leave empty to use the built-in default candidates.
    • freshSecs: Number of seconds in the heartbeat “fresh window.” It must be greater than the heartbeat write interval.
  3. Click the toggle to launch or close the Tauri desktop application.

Applicable Scenarios and Notes

  • Platform limitation: Currently, only Windows is supported. Linux and macOS are still in planning.
  • Shortcut naming: The shortcut file name is shared by the plugin and the desktop application (DeepSeek Harness.lnk). There is no custom name configuration.
  • Development and maintenance: After modifying the Rust source code under launcher/src-tauri, you must rebuild dsh-launcher.exe; otherwise, the executable inside the npm package will become inconsistent with the source code.
  • Dependency mechanism: The plugin relies on a marker-file protocol to control the desktop application (.dsh-heartbeat is used to detect running status, and .dsh-quit is used for graceful exit).

Conclusion

DSH Tauri Launcher standardizes the desktop application management workflow and makes it plugin-based, lowering the barrier to integrating Web and desktop clients. By sharing heartbeat files and shortcuts, the plugin ensures accurate status synchronization. For more technical details and source code, refer to the plugin directory or the GitHub repository.