dsh-desktop-restart
English | 中文
Two buttons in the sidebar foot of the DeepSeek Harness desktop app: reload the interface, or restart the entire application (app + Host).
The production desktop shell ships no Reload Page menu item and no built-in accelerator for it, and it exposes no way to relaunch itself — app.relaunch() lives in the Electron main process and is wired only to crash recovery. This plugin adds both, as ordinary sidebar actions.
[⟲ 刷新界面] [↻ 重启应用]
| Button | What it does |
|---|
| Reload UI | location.reload(). Reloads the page and every client plugin; the Host keeps running and turns in flight are not interrupted. |
| Restart app | Asks the Host to end every process of the application binary and start it again from the same path. Second click to confirm; the label turns red when Agent turns are running. |
Requirements
- Windows only. The restart path is built on the Windows Task Scheduler and Windows Script Host.
- DeepSeek Harness desktop
0.2.1-rc.2 or newer (declared in engines.dsh; tested on 0.2.1-rc.3), Node >=20.
- No npm dependencies.
index.js imports only Node built-ins; client.js imports react, provided by the shell.
Install
From npm:
pnpm add @moonsand/dsh-desktop-restart
From a local checkout, while developing:
# "dependencies": { "@moonsand/dsh-desktop-restart": "link:D:/path/to/dsh-desktop-restart" }
pnpm install
Either way, the package must also be registered as a bundle — that entry is what actually loads it:
"dsh": { "profile": { "bundles": [ ..., "@moonsand/dsh-desktop-restart" ] } }
A package that is installed but absent from dsh.profile.bundles silently does nothing: it produces no error and no button. Add the bundle entry, then restart the app.
The package ships its own cordis.patch.yml, which inserts the Host-side service, so no edit to the profile patch layer is needed.
Plugin market index (self-hosted)
market/index.json in this repository is a format 1 plugin market index, validated by DSH's own @deepseek-ai/dsh-plugin-market-index. To see this plugin in the desktop app's Plugins → Discover tab:
- Push the repository to GitHub; the index URL is
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MoonSand/dsh-desktop-restart/main/market/index.json (GitHub Pages works too).
- Plugins → Discover → Add index source, then paste that https URL. Index sources accept
http: / https: only, without credentials or a fragment.
- Cards show the bilingual title and description — the index stores
description as an { "en": …, "zh": … } object and must contain en; a Chinese-only value is rejected by the validator. Installing uses the exact npm version.
Every version entry carries engines.dsh matching package.json; the Discover tab derives compatibility and the default version from it, and disables Install when no version is compatible. When publishing a new version, append a versions entry with version, the real publish time as Unix seconds in publishTimestamp, and source.type: "npm".
How the restart works
Three platform facts shape the design, all measured on a real machine:
- A detached
powershell.exe starts but never runs its -EncodedCommand script — silently, with no error. The helper is spawned as a plain child instead.
- Every process the Host starts inherits Chromium's job object with kill-on-close, so anything the Host spawns dies with the application's main process. A helper that kills first and launches afterwards dies between those two steps.
- The Task Scheduler service resolves launches in its own process, outside that job, which is the only way to leave something running that outlives the kill.
So the order is inverted:
Client click
-> POST /desktop-restart/restart
-> Host writes watchdog.ps1 + launch.vbs, spawns a helper (powershell -EncodedCommand, not detached)
-> helper creates a one-shot scheduled task: wscript.exe launch.vbs (GUI subsystem, no console)
-> launch.vbs starts watchdog.ps1 hidden (window style 0)
-> helper polls a marker file (<= 5 s) to prove the watchdog is alive
-> without that proof it aborts and kills nothing
-> helper exits — it lives inside the job and must not touch the kill
-> watchdog (outside the job): sleep 1.2 s -> kill every process of the executable
-> wait for all to disappear -> sleep 0.6 s -> Start-Process the same path
-> verify it came back (up to 3 attempts, 6 s apart) -> append to the log
HTTP routes
| Route | Purpose |
|---|
GET /desktop-restart/status | { desktop, restarting, activeAgents, logPath } |
POST /desktop-restart/restart | Needs header x-dsh-desktop-restart: 1 (or the desktop proxy shape: loopback peer, no Host/Origin header) |
POST /desktop-restart/diagnose | Arms a watchdog in probe mode and reports { armed, method }. Kills nothing — use it to check the chain without restarting. |
Files
| File | Role |
|---|
index.js | Host half: routes, helper/watchdog generation, arming, kill/relaunch mode |
client.js | Client half: the two sidebar actions, styles, zh/en dictionaries, confirm state machine |
cordis.patch.yml | Inserts the Host service into the profile |
package.json | Declares both halves (dsh.bundle.patch + dsh.client) |
locale/*.json | Plugin page name and description |
icon.svg | Sidebar icon |
Because the package declares a Host half, Host changes need an app restart; client-half changes only need a page reload.
Known limitations
- The restart is a hard kill (
TerminateProcess). The turn in flight is interrupted. Session history and anything already written to disk are unaffected.
- A restart is refused while a package manager is installing into the profile (
409 installing). Three signals are checked: the plugin manager's own plugin-manager/install-state reports (installing / cancelling / applying) — authoritative, but it never reports completion, so a phase expires after ten minutes; a manifest written within the last 10 seconds, which catches the moment an install finishes, since the lockfile is written last; and, as a fallback, a live node process whose command line mentions pnpm. The 10-second window is kept short on purpose: a finished install should not block a restart for longer than it takes to notice. All three are best-effort and fail open.
- Only the Windows desktop app is supported. On a plain
dsh web Host the route answers 409 not-desktop and the button falls back to reloading the page.
- When the Scheduled Task channel is blocked by policy, the helper falls back to launching PowerShell directly, which may flash a console window; the log marks it
(direct powershell).
- No keyboard accelerator. The desktop shell hands shortcut combinations to a trusted native bridge before page handlers run, so a page-level listener cannot see them; adding one through the product's shortcut service would pull in a dependency this plugin does not otherwise need.
tasklist.exe is not used for process detection: on a measured machine it answers Access denied (exit 1) in this context, which would make every poll report the app as gone and start several copies. Detection filters by image name first (Get-Process -Name) and then checks .Path.
Development
npm test # smoke: builders, install guard, both sidebar actions, PS 5.1 parse
node --check index.js
node --check client.js
The three script builders are exported as pure functions, so they can be generated and handed to the Windows PowerShell parser without arming anything:
import { watchdogSource, watchdogLauncherSource, restartHelperScript } from '@moonsand/dsh-desktop-restart'
Safe way to exercise the whole chain without touching a live app: generate a watchdog with a non-existent executable path, run it with powershell -File, and watch the log walk matched pids: -> application gone=True -> relaunch issued -> watchdog end.
Logs
Everything the helper and the watchdog do is appended to %TEMP%\dsh-desktop-restart.log. This is the first place to look when a restart misbehaves. The GET /status route reports the exact path.
License
MIT. See LICENSE.
