DeepSeek Harness as a desktop app for macOS and Windows.

Desktop DeepSeek Harness
https://www.deepseek.com/en/harness/
Now in public preview worldwide and open source under MIT, on the Cordis "everything is a plugin" architecture. Desktop so far only macOS Apple silicon and Windows 64-bit, essentially an Electron shell around the full dsh Web. Works with lots of providers including local ones: Settings → Models, a huge dropdown plus a custom model API tab with base URL, protocol, and key.

Installs in literally a few clicks: download the dmg/exe, log in, settings and workspaces carry over, nothing is lost. During setup there is a profile choice — office tasks or code — and an answer detail level. Out of the box it covers everyday routine, code, research with citations, scheduled background tasks, and in-session previews of results.

Trajectory tab
The site highlights Developer tools separately: a full execution trace in real time — system prompt, turns, tool calls, payloads, schemas, timings. People call this the main edge over other harnesses: transcript as the product backbone, append-only context design without cache bugs, two-way communication with subagents.

Agent presets
In Settings → Agent you can pick PTC / Minimal / Creator mode besides Standard. PTC mode includes everything from Standard, but tools are exposed via the Code Mode MCP/SDK so the model packs batches of calls into one TypeScript program and filters, dedupes, counts, and summarizes right there — handy for data-heavy and mechanical multi-step work. Minimal mode is only terminal plus editor, for testing and comparing baseline performance; minimal context spent on tool descriptions means more room for the task, faster and cheaper. Creator mode customizes DSH itself through conversation: writes plugins for features or UI, combines tools and prompts to assemble your own mode.

Everything is a plugin
https://github.com/topics/dsh-plugin
Same logic: install plugins or ask in chat in Creator mode to write one for you, and it installs and verifies it. Examples from the thread: dsh-zoom for cmd +/- since the stock font limit is 17, a bell on task completion, an RSS aggregator from 30 sources for under 50 cents. The topic already has 17k repositories. The downside people mention: when the core is also plugins, tweaking behavior means dragging ~25 downstream patches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdcx_VHAREI

Creator Mode writes plugins itself from a single prompt — in the demo it assembles a Pomodoro timer in a couple of minutes and drops it straight into the plugin manager, plus it shows slides/web pages from notes in one go, scheduled tasks like a Friday summary, and installing community plugins by name in a couple of clicks with tuning someone else's plugin to fit, while V0.2 is pitched as a full plugin manager, more options for yourself, and two ways to start — Mac/Win desktop or Node with one command.

Discussion
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49929489
Complaints: Electron instead of native, ~/.dsh clutter in home instead of ~/Library/~/.config, third-party plugins as a malware vector, a fake deepseekharness.io site out-SEOing the official one. Some fear the paid API offers no opt-out from training. Praise: cordis as a potential emacs among harnesses for long-lived agents, lightness and speed.

Top comment: desktop enables telemetry by default (unproven, just a comment), while dsh web is explicit feedback only; the commenter says it is fixed by editing cordis.patch.yml with desktop-product-telemetry, product-analytics, and session-log-deepseek: enabled: false.

I got a bonus You've received a CNY 6 bonus credit, valid until October 11, 2026, 3:59 PM Beijing Time. Looks like they hand it out to try the desktop preview cheaply. After my first tests it makes a positive impression.

#deepseek #dsh #harness #desktop