dsh-tab-watchdog

A persistent plugin for DeepSeek Harness Web: when one of your workspaces/sessions finishes a work round, errors out, or needs attention, the tab title blinks a 🟢/🟡 badge.

This is the "bundle" version (persistent, installable, shareable) of the Tab Watchdog dynamic plugin originally developed in Creator mode. Unlike a dynamic plugin it survives dsh restarts and browser reloads (F5).

How it works (architecture)

Two halves in a single npm package, like the official plugins:

• Host half (index.js) — profile composition row (cordis.patch.yml + dsh.bundle.patch). It makes the package a Loader entry: that row is what pulls the browser half into the boot manifest. No business logic here.
• Browser half (lib/client.js, served via dsh.client + the ./client export) — a bundle in the window.__ModuleLoader__.load({ id, factory }) format. It subscribes to the Host events forwarded to the browser and handles everything (state, watermark, blink). No UI is added to the harness.

Triggers (what makes it blink)

The browser only receives the events on the dsh-api-remotes allowlist. The watchdog uses:

Event	Level	Label
api-session/status(sessionId, running=false)	🟢 green	"Finished a work round"
api-session/error(sessionId, message)	🟡 yellow	"Error…"
user-questions/request(...) (passive)	🟡 yellow	"Asking for a response"
approval/request(...) (passive)	🟡 yellow	"Requires approval"

The user-questions/request and approval/request observers are passive: they always call next() so they never interfere with the official question/approval UI. If another handler consumes a request before the watchdog sees it, the yellow may not show; the green/error emit events are always delivered to every listener in parallel, so they are guaranteed.

Note: workflow/end, agent/status, and goal/changed are not forwarded to the browser in this version's allowlist; observing them would require host-side aggregation over a custom channel (out of scope by design).

Watermark model

• Events only arrive while the page is open (even on another browser tab — that is exactly the intended use case).
• New events stay "pending" until you come back to the page.
• While the page is not focused and at least one item is pending, the title alternates between 🟢n 🟡m · and ``.
• An event that arrives while you are focused is marked read immediately (no leftover blinking).
• When a session restarts (running=true), its pending entries are removed.
• An error on a session "freezes" its entry in yellow: a later running=false does not downgrade it to green.

Installation (local web profile)

From the plugin checkout:

# from the directory that contains dsh-tab-watchdog/
npx @deepseek-ai/dsh@latest plugin --profile web add ./dsh-tab-watchdog

Then restart dsh web. The browser half activates on the next reload/startup. The added row is the tab-watchdog entry in the profile's cordis.yml.

Removal:

npx @deepseek-ai/dsh@latest plugin --profile web remove dsh-tab-watchdog

dsh plugin forwards to pnpm inside the profile. If pnpm is not installed: corepack enable or npm i -g pnpm.

Development

The browser half source is src/client.js (a CJS fragment living inside the loader factory). The lib/client.js artifact is committed (no build step at git-install time).

npm run build   # regenerates lib/client.js from src/client.js
npm test        # verify (bundle structure) + smoke (blink/watermark logic)

No prepare/monorepo toolchain needed: out-of-tree plugins cannot use the internal clientBundle preset, so the loader format is reproduced by hand (scripts/build.mjs).

Sharing with the community

The package declares dsh.bundle.patch, so it installs as a profile bundle. Because lib/client.js and index.js are committed artifacts, a git install works without prepare:

npx @deepseek-ai/dsh@latest plugin --profile web add github:andreagosto/dsh-tab-watchdog

For discoverability, the GitHub repository carries the dsh-plugin topic (see the official deepseek-harness README, "Community and support"). Alternatively: npm publish, then dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-tab-watchdog.

Notes and limitations

• Tested against runtime @deepseek-ai/dsh 0.1.2-rc.1 (mind the "breaking changes" notice on rc prereleases).
• The browser half is hand-written against the APIs observed in the installed bundles; the structure is validated by npm test, but verify it live in your own profile.
• No settings namespace: the plugin does not appear in Settings → Plugins. To disable it use dsh plugin remove (or set disabled: true on the row in the profile patch).

License

MIT