dsh-tui

DeepSeek Harness, in your terminal.

dsh-tui is a full terminal front end for DeepSeek Harness, not a shim over one. It installs as an ordinary DSH profile, so it boots the same host as the Web and Desktop surfaces — the same base composition, providers, credentials, plugins, settings, and tools — and draws the whole thing with Ink.

  ██████╗ ███████╗██╗  ██╗
  ██╔══██╗██╔════╝██║  ██║      DSH // CODING HARNESS
  ██║  ██║███████╗███████║
  ██║  ██║╚════██║██╔══██║      ❯ fix the flaky test
  ██████╔╝███████║██║  ██║
  ╚═════╝ ╚══════╝╚═╝  ╚═╝      ◆ the retry wrapper was racing the timeout; patched…

  ╭─ ❯ YOU ─────────────────────────────────────────────╮
  │ fix the flaky test                                  │
  ╰─────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

  ╭─ 󰒋 larper · 󰚩 deepseek-v4.1-flash · █ max · 󰉋 ~/project · 󰊢 main ↑2 ─── 1.2M ──╮
  │ ❯ ▏                                                                          │
  ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ctrl+s tasks ───╯

Quick start

npm install -g @deepseek-ai/dsh@latest   # the Node-hosted harness
npm install -g @d0nj/dsh-tui      # this terminal surface
dsh-tui            # launch it

That is the whole setup. The package is a real DSH plugin plus its dsh-tui/dst launcher. The first run auto-initializes the tui profile (this needs pnpm), then launches your Node-hosted harness. To register it manually in an existing profile instead: dsh plugin --profile tui add @d0nj/dsh-tui; afterwards dsh-tui and dsh --profile tui are equivalent.

Why dsh-tui

• The real harness. Same host, providers, credentials, MCP plugins, settings, and tools as every other DSH surface. Token accounting, context pressure, and session stats come from the same projections the Web and Desktop clients use.
• A deck that never floats. The chat owns the alternate screen and lays out as a fixed-height document: the deck is always the terminal's last rows, the transcript scrolls in place, and drag-select keeps the range highlighted for ctrl+c or right-click copy.
• Smooth where it matters. The boot card is driven by a helper process while the host loads, then hands off to the chat card in the same spot. Full-screen frames are diffed row by row, so animations repaint only the lines that changed.
• Built for long sessions. Tool cards with syntax-highlighted output and red/green diff bands, Claude Code-style background tasks with one /tasks sheet, live compaction feedback, /shake to prune oversized tool results, steering and message queues, and a waiting dock that keeps you informed with a spinner verb and the elapsed clock.
• Everything DSH ships. Approvals, questions, slash commands, skills, presets, jobs, schedules, workspaces, and model/theme/effort pickers — in the terminal.
• Batteries included. Persistent JavaScript and Python eval cells, and a real Chromium browser tool with automation tells suppressed.
• Your setup sticks. Reasoning visibility, todo HUD, expanded tool output, and theme are remembered across launches in $DSH_HOME/tui/preferences.json.

Install

Requirements

• Node.js 20+
• Node.js 20+ and pnpm\n- the Node build of @deepseek-ai/dsh (npm install -g @deepseek-ai/dsh; the Desktop app runtime cannot host the terminal UI)
• A truecolor terminal: Kitty, iTerm2, Windows Terminal, Ghostty, or WezTerm
• Python 3.8+ only if you use Python eval cells; Chromium is downloaded on first use of the browser tool

Profile setup

dsh-tui install

This creates a minimal tui profile: the dsh-base and dsh-web-app host bundles plus the terminal surface. Nothing is copied from your other profiles. To add plugins, use the profile like any other:

dsh plugin --profile tui add <package>
# or edit ~/.dsh/profiles/tui/cordis.patch.yml

Run

dsh-tui                    # new session
dsh-tui --continue         # most recent session in this directory
dsh-tui --resume <id>      # a specific saved session
dsh-tui --model deepseek-v4.1-flash --effort max

From a checkout

bun install
bun run build
bun run install:profile
bun run start

Permission modes

/mode follows the harness sandbox policy and applies to the current session; before the first message it applies to the next one.

/mode without an argument shows the active policy.

Development

AGENTS.md covers the architecture, invariants, and test policy. The short version:

bun install
bun run typecheck
bun run test
bun run build && bun run sync
bun run start

Credits

The interaction design is inspired by oh-my-pi — the bottom-pinned composer, dense status line, and card-style tool output. Background commands and tasks follow Claude Code's model: static tool rows, task notices, and one tasks surface. DSH's rendering, layout, and glyph vocabulary are its own.

Portions of the color math, duration/count formatting, session-accent derivation, and glyph vocabulary are adapted from oh-my-pi, which is MIT licensed.

License

MIT