Introduction

DeepSeek Harness (DSH) allows developers to build agents, but its default output is presented as non-interactive log streams. Developers need an interface in the terminal to directly interact with agents, handle approvals, and address questions. Talon UI is a DSH plugin that provides a fully interactive terminal session, integrating streaming transcripts, tool approvals, user questions, and slash commands in the terminal.

Overview

Talon is a terminal UI plugin designed for DeepSeek Harness (dsh) agents. It transforms the original log stream into an interactive terminal session, allowing developers to view streaming output in real time, approve tool execution, answer user questions, and manage sessions. The plugin is maintained by awnlight and licensed under MIT.

Core Features

Talon UI provides the following core capabilities:

  • Startup Banner: When a session opens, it displays the version, active model, and working directory as a scrollable transcript cell.
  • Streaming Transcript: Displays role headings with plain text and streaming markdown, supporting drag selection and copying. Includes context injection cards and blank line separators.
  • Tone Hierarchy: Uses brand cyan to distinguish the model and dim values to distinguish quoted values, avoiding a monotonous wall of gray.
  • Approval Panel: When a tool requests escalated permissions (for example, sandbox write denial), it displays tool details, a command preview, and the current directory, supporting 1 approve, 2 deny, and Esc cancel.
  • User Questions: Supports single-choice, multi-choice, custom answers, and sequential questions through the ask_user_question tool.
  • Slash Commands: Supports /help, /status, /resume, /clear, /exit, and /quit, with fuzzy autocompletion.
  • Session Resume: Use /resume to open a selector, supporting filtering, workspace switching, ISO timestamps, persistence markers, replaying transcripts, and continuing the conversation.
  • Clean Exit: Use /exit, or press Ctrl+C/Ctrl+D when the input is empty, to exit and print the session ID for resume.

Installation

Before installing, ensure that deepseek-harness has been built.

cd deepseek-harness
pnpm install
pnpm run build:lib:host

After the build is complete, install the plugin:

cd deepseek-harness
pnpm dsh plugin --profile talon add talon-ui

Usage Examples

  • Explain a feature: Enter “Explain what this repository does.” and view the streaming transcript.
  • Handle a multi-select question: Enter “Use ask_user_question to ask me a multi-select question with options Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.”
  • Tool approval: Enter “Run exactly: touch ~/talon-demo”. If the sandbox denies writing, the approval panel is triggered.
  • Session resume: Enter /exit to end the session, restart dsh, enter /resume, and choose the session. Even if the working directory has changed, the transcript is replayed and the agent continues the previous conversation.

Notes

  • Environment Requirements: Node.js >= 22.19 and pnpm are required.
  • Directory Structure: deepseek-harness must exist as a sibling directory to the talon-ui repository.
  • Terminal Type: An interactive terminal (TTY) is required. Talon reports an error in non-TTY environments; for automated scenarios, use dsh --profile headless.
  • Version Compatibility: talon-ui@0.2.0 has been verified against dsh 0.1.2-alpha.1.

Summary

Talon UI transforms DSH agents from one-way log streams into a fully interactive terminal experience, addressing the pain point of managing complex sessions in the command line. To learn more, visit the plugin directory or the GitHub repository.