dsh-cyber-tao · Cyber Tao

A skin for DeepSeek Harness (dsh): an obsidian ground, bronze borders, rice-paper white text, cinnabar for emphasis, jade for state, and a full-bleed mountain-gate visual on the new-session page

What it changes

• A full set of semantic tokens: an obsidian ground #0a0d10, panels #13181d, and exactly one dark gold border rgba(228,207,168,.12), with rice-paper white text #efe7d7. About 80 --dsw-alias-* / --dsw-specific-* tokens change at once, and every layer follows.
• A talisman grid: body::before lays a 140px dark-gold grid at 8% opacity with mix-blend-mode: screen — the prototype's texture layer. It is faint enough to disturb no text, and pointer-events: none guarantees it intercepts no click.
• A full cover on the new-session page: the acolyte, the mountain gate above the clouds, and the calligraphy. It collapses on entering a conversation or the trajectory.
• Brand takeover: the sidebar and hero marks both become a bronze seal bearing the character 道, with the subtitle "Cyber Tao Temple".
• Personified copy: thinking → "The acolyte is contemplating the workings of fate…"; failure → "The workings are disturbed — recalculate."; and a confirmation prompt is prefixed with "this carries consequences; a human decides" — the original text stays, since that is what you judge by.
• A right-hand status dock: always present; see the table below.

Palette rules

The prototype states the rule in one line: an obsidian ground, bronze borders, rice-paper white text, cinnabar for emphasis, jade for state. Five words, five uses; stray beyond them and this is no longer the skin:

Colour	Value	Used for
Obsidian	#0a0d10 / #13181d	Ground and panels — most of the interface
Bronze	rgba(228,207,168,.12)	Borders. All layering on a dark ground rests on this one line
Rice-paper white	#efe7d7	Body text
Cinnabar	#b94235	Emphasis: the selected session, and hovering a destructive action. Only ever for "this is the one"
Jade	#6e9788	State: running. A step apart from the success green, so running and success never read as one
Red gold	#e0c58f → #c8a768	The primary action button (the prototype's .new-btn gradient)

The prototype writes another line too: the temple's character must run deep, but the product's usability must not be swallowed. So the three-column layout, the information density and the button and card hierarchy are untouched; only atmosphere, wording and texture take on the temple.

What the status dock shows

Card	Fields	Source
Waiting on you	Tools awaiting approval, questions awaiting an answer	ConversationSnapshot.pending. Appears only when something is genuinely waiting
Current Session	State, elapsed turn time, current tool duration, inbox, model	running / turnTimings / runningCalls / queue; the model comes from the latest assistant message's provenance.model
Context	Occupancy %, token load, and the System / tool-schema / conversation composition bar	The contextPressure and contextBreakdown projections
Permission	The active permission and sandbox mode	The permissions projection
Usage	Input / output / cache hits / time spent / turns	The tokenUsage and sessionStats projections
Plan	Todo progress	The todos projection (the card is absent when there is no list)
Tool calls	Tool name · real duration · outcome	Trajectory tool-result nodes (duration = time - callTime) plus the snapshot's runningCalls. Appears only once a call has happened
Scripture injection	The source and form of each context injection	Trajectory context nodes (provenance.label / form)
Folded away	Compaction count, items and tokens folded	Trajectory compaction nodes. Absent when nothing was compacted

⚠️ A tool duration may be absent: it can only be computed while the matching tool/call is still inside the session window. Older calls that scrolled past report only name and outcome — better blank than an invented figure.

⚠️ Composition is not a total: the three contextBreakdown figures use fixed-density estimates (systematically low for Chinese and JSON schema) and do not add up to the token load, which is anchored to the provider's reported value. The UI says so too.

Deliberately not done

The prototype's right column has a Goal · 72% · 5 / 7 checkpoints line, three hardcoded Context files (entries such as ui-theme/src/client/index.ts at 8.1 KB), and a daily-practice figure on the cover — the harness has a projection for none of them.

Decoration is fine; fake state is not. A spirit figure permanently reading 76 is disbelieved the second time it is seen, and the real numbers beside it get doubted along with it. So none of them are built, and the right column keeps only cards backed by real data.

The prototype's agent copy for Tool run and Context is also not implemented: The harness's tool rows have only ok / error and no running to hang on, and forcing one would produce a permanently lit fake state.

Install

Skin market (recommended): find it in the market and install, then restart dsh.

Manual install (during development):

npm install && npm run build
DST=~/.dsh/profiles/web/node_modules/dsh-cyber-tao
mkdir -p "$DST" && cp -R lib cordis.patch.yml skin.json package.json README.md "$DST/"
# then add dsh-cyber-tao to the profile package.json's dependencies and dsh.profile.bundles

After changing it you must restart dsh: the profile tree has to be recomposed, and without a restart the UI stays as it was.

🔴 The side effect of autoApply

Installing switches to this skin by default (autoApply, default true). The reason is that the harness does not persist third-party theme ids, and the built-in Settings → Appearance has only three cells: light / dark / follow system, with no third-party themes — switching manually requires the skin market's own panel (Settings → Skin Market).

The cost: it reapplies on every refresh, so switching away lasts only for that session. To change permanently, set autoApply to false or uninstall the plugin. It is implemented as an 8-second window after startup (long enough to outlast the Host preference snapshot), after which it lets go entirely.

Version requirements

Requires dsh 0.1.1-rc.2 or newer. The brand-slot takeover relies on slot priority shadowing (only equal priorities count as a conflict; different priorities shadow, and the lower number renders). On older versions these three registrations throw and are swallowed, merely falling back to the official brand mark, while the palette and cover keep working.

Assets

The cover comes from the prototype's full-screen design, with its mock sidebar, mock panels and title buttons cropped away, leaving only the artwork (652×500 webp, inlined as a data URI).

Development

npm run check   # tsc --noEmit
npm run build   # produces lib/index.js (host half) and lib/client.js (browser half)

lib/ must be committed: skins install via github:owner/repo, which installs the build output from the repository; if the source moves and the output does not, people install the old version (and the market uninstalls the package outright over the missing entry file).

License

MIT © Science Roam Limited