In this manual

The thirteen sections are ordered as "set it up → use it → when things go wrong". If you only want to fix one specific problem, jump straight to Section 12.

• 1 · What this is — three layers; everyday use touches only the top one.
• 2 · Installation — which package for each platform, and how to install it.
• 3 · First launch — the six-step wizard, and "closing the window is not quitting".
• 4 · Main interface at a glance — what each of the four areas handles.
• 5 · Your first conversation — how to state a request clearly.
• 6 · Tray menu — every system-level entry point lives here.
• 7 · Settings page — what each section can change.
• 8 · Profiles — how to switch configurations and how failures fall back.
• 9 · Bundled plugins — all 35 plugins in seven categories, plus how to manage and reinstall them.
• 10 · Safe mode and recovery mode — how to rescue an app that a bad plugin stopped from starting.
• 11 · Updates — five stages and four reusable actions.
• 12 · Troubleshooting — a symptom table and the diagnostic export.
• 13 · Data and help — where files live and where to find more documentation.

1. What this is

In one sentence: it puts DeepSeek Harness's agent capabilities inside a desktop application — double-click the icon and start a conversation, letting it read and write files, run commands, and call tools.

The product consists of three layers. You only ever interact with the third one; the first two run automatically in the background.

The Essentials edition differs from the general edition in the software repository in one more way: it is not an empty app that ships a shell and waits for you to install plugins — 35 plugins that have already been picked and that work well together travel inside the installer. The first time you open it after installing, those capabilities are already waiting on the plugins page, with no need to hunt for each one on npm.

2. Installation

Grab the package for your platform from the product download page and double-click it. The installer already bundles Electron, Node.js, pnpm, and a pinned version of the DSH runtime, so you don't need to install anything else. This version bundles Electron 44.0.0, Node.js 24.21.0, pnpm 11.8.0, Python 3.12.14, and DSH runtime 0.2.2-rc.1.

Upgrading does not mean closing the old version by hand. The installer first asks the running copy to quit, force-closes it if it does not respond, and only then overwrites the files; if it genuinely cannot be closed, the installation reports an explicit error and stops, rather than leaving you with an app that will not open after the install. Saving your work first is still worth the habit. Uninstalling works the same way: it confirms and closes the running program first, so that files are not locked halfway through the removal.

Note: the download page currently offers three builds — Windows x64, the macOS universal package and Linux x64. The Linux arm64 build is produced on the test channel and is not yet on the stable download links; if you hit native-module problems on an ARM device, use the x64 build for that platform, or a test-channel build.

3. First launch

The first startup prepares a default configuration automatically (a Profile named desktop) and starts the interface service locally. You will see a wizard first — six steps in all, and you can choose "Skip setup" at any point and fill things in later on the settings page:

The last page first gives you a category overview: memory and context, interface and workspace, agents and skills, documents and media, code and engineering, robotics and simulation, connectivity and automation — each category states what it can do for you and how many plugins it contains. Only after you click "Finish and start" does the wizard install them one at a time, showing each plugin's name, version, category, full description and a line of thanks to whoever made it. No input is needed during the installation — just let the progress run through: 35 packages go in one by one, so the first launch takes a little longer than usual.

When the wizard finishes you land in the main interface. Closing the window is not quitting the app: by default a close only puts the window in the tray, while the background service and any running tasks carry on. To quit for real, use "Quit" in the tray menu.

4. Main interface at a glance

With the bundled plugins in place, the sidebar and the input box also grow a few entry points: skill centre, task board, cost dashboard, input history, expert teams and so on. They all come from the plugins in Section 9, and turning the corresponding plugin off makes them disappear.

5. Starting your first conversation

1. Start a new session and set the working directory.
2. Say what to do, where, and what the result should look like — in one sentence. For example: "Read the README in this directory and list every download link in it that is out of date, as a table".
3. Once it starts working, watch the tool calls and the files it changes; if you want a different direction, interrupt it and state the new requirement.
4. If you are not happy with the result, say exactly what is wrong. It revises with the context in hand, so there is no need to open another session.

Three things that make a request clear:

• Scope: which directory and which files may change; do not leave it open-ended.
• Acceptance: what counts as done (it runs, the tests pass, the table has no empty cells).
• Constraints: what must not be touched, formats that must be preserved, whether it may use the network.

6. Tray menu

Once the window is closed, the tray icon is the main way into the app. Right-click the tray icon to see:

The "Mode: Enhanced / Compatible / Extended" item mentioned in the previous edition of this manual has been dropped: since 2.2.9 the window mode is fixed, and only "Window appearance (material)" remains in settings.

7. Settings page

The settings entry point is at the bottom of the sidebar (Settings → Desktop settings). The sections are:

In safe mode this page is read-only, and browser access, LAN, remote control and notifications are disabled as well — that is by design, not a fault.

8. Profiles: several configurations

A Profile is an independent configuration set: sessions, plugins and settings each belong to one Profile and do not interfere with the others. The usual split is "work" and "personal", or "everyday" and "trying new plugins".

Three practical rules:

• If one Profile is broken, another one keeps you working — you do not have to repair the broken one first.
• A new Profile has only the official base components; the 35 bundled plugins are installed only into the Profile the wizard completed. If you switch Profiles and want to keep using them, check the actual list on the plugins page and add whatever is missing.
• Deleting a Profile moves it into the recovery backup directory (it is not erased on the spot), and shared sessions and settings are kept; for that Profile, though, it is no longer usable — so confirm before you do it.

9. Bundled plugins

This section is the centrepiece of this edition. The 2.2.9 installer ships 35 plugins across seven broad categories, installed into the current Profile automatically when the wizard first completes. Below we first explain what is installed and how it gets there, then introduce them one category at a time, and finally how to manage them and how to install them again.

9.1 What ships from the factory

The installer distributes all 35 plugin tarballs together (the plugins/ directory), and the first wizard installs them into the Profile one by one when it finishes. They are not "optional downloads" but already there once installed: open the plugins page and all 35 appear under "Installed plugins", enabled by default.

9.2 How bundling happens

A few details worth knowing:

• Installation happens one at a time: as each one goes in, the wizard shows its name, version, category, description and author. Do not close the window before they are all done.
• The success criterion is that the package name appears in the Profile's package.json dependencies, not whether the command reported an error; the name is also added to profile.bundles, otherwise you end up with "installed but not enabled".
• A single plugin failing does not block startup: if any fail, a summary dialog lists each name and reason, and the same lines go into the desktop log (bundled plugin not installed: <name>: <reason>); the wizard still finishes. Afterwards you can check on the plugins page which ones really are in the list.
• They are installed only into the Profile the wizard completed. A Profile created later is clean; rerun the wizard or add them from the plugins page when you need them.

9.3 The detailed list by category

The following lists all 35 plugins across the seven categories. The v after a name is the bundled version; the "Good for" line is a suggestion to help you choose, not a limitation of what the plugin does.

9.4 Disabling, uninstalling and installing again

• Disable first, uninstall second: disabling only stops a plugin loading at the next start, with its installed files and configuration still in place, so it can be switched back on at any time; uninstalling goes through dsh plugin remove and deletes the package, and the interface asks whether you accept that "the features it provides will disappear once it is uninstalled".
• Uninstalling a bundled plugin frees very little space: the original .tgz files stay in the program directory's plugins/, and what you delete is the installed copy inside the Profile. To slim things down for real you need an installer without those packages, not a plugin-by-plugin removal.
• Installing them back: Settings → Desktop tools → "Setup wizard", run through to step 6 and click "Finish and start" — it installs whatever the Profile is missing; you can also install by hand using the routes in 9.5.
• Protected components cannot be touched: the components plugin management itself needs (the Host, the web service, file access and so on) are marked "Needed for plugin management; cannot be disabled or uninstalled"; built-in base components such as dsh-base and dsh-web-app never enter the manageable list at all, and their status is visible only under "Settings → Built-in plugins".

9.5 Installing plugins yourself: three routes

The plugins page ("Plugins" in the sidebar, subtitled "Install, enable, and configure plugins") does two things:

• Install a new plugin: click "Add plugin", choose "Install a third-party plugin", and enter an npm package name (such as dsh-xxx or @author/plugin-name), a GitHub repository address, or a local directory. During the installation you can pick a registry: Default registry, Official registry, Mainland China mirror, or a custom internal npm registry.
• Manage what is installed: under "Installed plugins", enable, disable, uninstall and check for updates, and see each plugin's version, source and runtime status.

Plugin marketplace offers two choices: dsh-community-market (the built-in open marketplace, which supports custom data sources, Beta) and dsh-market (a popular community marketplace drawing on awesome-dsh-plugin, whose bundled package name is dshmarket). Only one of the two can be enabled at a time; the marketplace is itself a plugin, so it can also be switched on and off right on the plugins page.

Three commands in the terminal (without --profile they act on the currently active Profile):

9.6 Restart after installing, and confirm it loaded

A newly installed plugin is loaded after a restart — when the installation finishes, the interface says "Installed; restart DSH to load it." To confirm it is really there:

1. Open the plugins page and check that it appears under "Installed plugins" and is enabled.
2. Look in the sidebar for its entry point (a marketplace, a board, an expert team, a cost page and so on).
3. If you are still unsure, open "Settings → Logs", raise the log level and restart once; a failed load usually leaves an explicit error.

9.7 When a plugin breaks the app

You do not need to reinstall the system or delete the data directory. Use the recovery assistant from Section 10: first disable the one you added most recently under "Plugin management" and start again; if that is not enough, use "Roll back" to return to the last checkpoint that would start. Bundled plugins are no different — they are exactly like the ones you added later.

10. Safe mode and recovery mode

Both features solve the same class of problem: it will not start after something was installed. The difference is that safe mode gets you inside to work in the clean, while recovery mode stops at the door to repair.

10.1 Safe mode

Safe mode starts on its own temporary data directory: it does not read your existing plugins, settings, sessions or workspace records, so those cannot drag it down either. Your original data is not touched — not a single byte.

How to get in: tray → "Enter safe mode…"; or "Safe mode" on the first page of the recovery assistant.

What you can do in safe mode:

• Find out whether it really is a plugin problem — if everything behaves in safe mode, the problem is almost certainly in a plugin or in the configuration.
• Hold conversations, read and write files in the web interface, and get the urgent work done.
• Read the logs and export diagnostics (the recovery assistant can export them too).

Limits (by design):

• The desktop settings page is permanently read-only.
• Anything that depends on persisted configuration — browser access, LAN access, remote control, desktop notifications — is unavailable.
• A "Safe mode" banner stays at the top of the interface, reminding you that you are running in a temporary environment.

Getting out: tray → "Leave safe mode and restart…". Afterwards the temporary environment is cleaned up automatically at the next normal start, so it does not sit on disk taking up space.

10.2 The recovery assistant (recovery mode)

When you end up here:

• You chose "Recovery assistant…" from the tray yourself.
• Startup failed several times in a row and the app fell back to the recovery assistant on its own.
• When the interface really will not come up, a separate "Recover DSH Desktop" dialog appears, so you can try recovery once more without restarting the background service.

The recovery assistant tells you three things: why you are here (a manual entry says "Entered recovery mode manually"), which Profile and which directory are in use, and where startup stopped (Electron initialisation → shell environment preparation → desktop runtime preparation → Profile selection → plugin configuration assembly → plugin services → desktop interface → startup result). Wherever it stopped is how far the problem reaches.

How roll back works: after every successful start the app stores a startup checkpoint — the configuration that was known to work at that moment. Rolling back moves the Profile, settings.yaml and the plugin enablement states back to that point together. A checkpoint shows one of three states — restorable, unreadable, or no checkpoint yet; "unreadable" means the checkpoint itself is damaged, so pick an earlier one.

Reset to factory settings: moves the current data directory to the trash (the Recycle Bin on Windows) as a whole, and a fresh default Profile is created after the restart. Project files outside the data directory are not deleted — it only clears its own configuration and sessions. Make sure you really no longer need the old sessions before you do it.

10.3 Getting out

Once it is fixed there is nothing to clean up by hand: leave the recovery assistant and start the app normally. If you clicked "Restart" from recovery mode, the app goes through the normal startup sequence again; if that fails it returns to the recovery assistant instead of looping forever.

11. Updates

Five stages: check → download → install → restart → confirm the version. Four actions you will reuse:

• Check by hand: tray → "Check for updates…", or Settings → Version and updates → "Check for updates".
• Restart: Settings → Version and updates → "Restart"; you can also click the update notice in the title bar.
• Clear installation leftovers: a failed update is usually an old instance holding on to the files. Quit from the tray and run the installer again — there is no need to delete directories by hand.
• Going back: to return only to the last state that would start, use "Roll back" in the recovery assistant. To move to the installer of another channel, take the matching version from the download page and install it over the top — Profiles and plugins are kept either way.

12. What to do when something goes wrong

Exporting diagnostics

Tray → "Export diagnostics…", or the same item at the bottom of the settings page. The package contains local paths, logs, system information and, after a crash, memory fragments. Read it yourself before sharing it: paths and session fragments can contain private material.

13. Where your data lives, and where to find help

More documentation

• README.md / README.zh.md: installation, building, the development environment.
• docs/: architecture notes, the release process, the plugin development guide.
• Nonead-DSH-Desktop-User-Manual.en.md in the same directory, plus the HTML editions in eight languages: the same content, useful for cross-checking.
• CHANGELOG.md: what changed in each version; the 2.2.9 entry carries the same "bundled plugin list (35)" as this manual.

Acknowledgements

This product is built on the upstream DeepSeek Harness and on the open-source community: Electron, Node.js, pnpm, Python, and the Cordis plugin system with its official bundle ecosystem. Thanks to the upstream maintainers and to everyone who contributed.

The 35 plugins distributed with the installer come from the following authors and teams (sorted by name; one author may have contributed several):

Each plugin's exact version, author and full description travel with the installer in plugins/manifest.json, and can also be seen in the details on the plugins page.

The manual is updated with each release. If something does not match the version you are running, please open an issue on GitHub or GitCode.