DeepSeek Harness Desktop

A one-click desktop app for DeepSeek Harness — run the full agent harness locally without installing Node.js, pnpm, or Docker.

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Status: developer preview. The upstream dsh is still iterating rapidly with compatibility-breaking changes; this project tracks it closely.

Features

• One-click install — No Node.js / pnpm / Docker needed; bundles the Harness kernel and a Node runtime with fully automatic first-run setup.
• Self-healing updates — Syncs to the latest release on every launch, with a silent "Update Now / Later" prompt when a newer version is found.
• Lightweight & cross-platform — A Tauri 2 shell with smaller installers and lower RAM; native windows on Windows / macOS / Linux with a bilingual UI.
• Embedded web UI — The full Harness interface runs in-window, with a sidebar for service status, port, logs, auto-start, open in browser, data folder and language.

Why Tauri and not Electron? The same features run lighter: a smaller installer and lower idle RAM, with native window controls that stay snappy — important for a local agent host you may keep open all day. The embedded WebView2/WebKit (not a bundled Chromium) also shrinks the install footprint.

Preview

Quick Start

1. Download the installer for your platform from the Releases page.
2. Install and launch the app.
3. On the first run the app installs its dependencies: if a compatible Node.js (v22.15.0+ / v23.8.0+) is already on your machine it is reused as-is; otherwise the Node.js runtime and the prebuilt Harness bundle are downloaded (a few hundred MB in total). When setup finishes, the embedded Harness UI opens at http://127.0.0.1:3080.

First run requires a network connection. Everything after that runs locally. Once installed, later launches skip the setup screens and boot straight into the harness; a silent prompt appears when a newer Harness release is available.

Requirements

• Windows 10+ (64-bit)
• macOS 10.15+
• Linux (mainstream distributions that support AppImage)
• Network on first launch

The app bundles Node.js v22.22.0 LTS, which satisfies the Harness requirement of v22.15.0+ or v23.8.0+. On first launch it first checks for a local Node.js installation: any compatible version is reused directly and the bundled runtime download is skipped.

Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• Rust 1.77+
• pnpm 9+
• Platform build toolchain (Windows: MSVC + WebView2; macOS: Xcode CLT; Linux: WebKit2GTK)

Run in dev mode

git clone https://github.com/hairyf/deepseek-harness-desktop.git
cd deepseek-harness-desktop
pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev

Build installers

pnpm tauri build

Regenerate icons

pnpm icons

How It Works

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Tauri WebView (React)                        │
│   setup state machine → progress → iframe    │
│   loads the dsh web UI + sidebar controls    │
└──────────────────────┬───────────────────────┘
                       │ invoke commands + events
┌──────────────────────┴───────────────────────┐
│ Tauri Rust backend                           │
│   service/download  installer + extraction   │
│   service/workflow  dsh process lifecycle    │
│   task              dsh health checks        │
└──────┬───────────────────────────┬───────────┘
       │                           │
  runtime/ (Node.js v22.22.0)   dependencies/dsh/ (prebuilt bundle)
       └─────────────┬─────────────┘
                     ▼
   dsh --profile web --host 127.0.0.1 --port 3080
                     │  DSH_HOME=<app-data>/data/dsh
                     ▼
        http://127.0.0.1:3080/  ← embedded UI

• The prebuilt Harness bundle is published by deepseek-harness-pkg; see docs/PKG-CONTRACT.md for the release contract.
• On every launch the app fetches the latest release commit from deepseek-harness-pkg and re-downloads the bundle when the installed one is outdated (the local install is kept when GitHub is unreachable).
• Full architecture notes: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.

Data Directory

The data directory follows the Tauri bundle identifier (io.github.hairyf.deepseek-harness-desktop):

• Windows: %APPDATA%\io.github.hairyf.deepseek-harness-desktop\
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/io.github.hairyf.deepseek-harness-desktop/
• Linux: ~/.local/share/io.github.hairyf.deepseek-harness-desktop/

It contains:

• runtime/ — bundled Node.js runtime
• dependencies/dsh/ — extracted Harness bundle
• data/dsh/ — Harness user data ($DSH_HOME: profiles, sessions, settings)
• logs/ — app and dsh service logs
• .store.dat — desktop settings (port, auto-start, language)

FAQ

• Port 3080 is already in use? Change the port in the sidebar settings and restart the service.
• What happens during the first-time setup? The sidebar shows the install log and the live service log.
• Why does the app download so much on first launch? It downloads the Node.js runtime and the prebuilt Harness bundle (a few hundred MB) once; afterwards everything runs offline.
• Why does the app contact GitHub on every launch? It compares the installed Harness bundle against the latest release commit and re-downloads automatically when they differ, so upstream fixes arrive without a manual reinstall. If GitHub is unreachable, the local install is kept as-is.
• How do updates work after the first install? Later launches skip setup, check in the background for a newer release, and show a small "Update Now / Later" prompt — updating re-downloads the bundle and restarts the service.

Security Notes

• This project is for personal learning, research, and testing only — please do not use it commercially.
• dsh is an agent harness with local code execution capability. Run it only in a trusted, isolated environment, and never import untrusted configurations or plugins from unknown sources.
• The developers are not liable for any data loss or security issues arising from the use of this project.

Related Projects

Acknowledgements

• DeepSeek Harness — the upstream project
• n8n-desktop — reference implementation
• Tauri — the desktop framework

License

MIT © deepseek-harness-desktop contributors