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DSH Lifeline
Right-side message navigation rail for DeepSeek Harness.
Per-message tick marks · hover preview drawer · smooth jump · star bookmarks · realtime slide animation
TL;DR: A persistent right-side rail that turns your conversation history into a navigable timeline — hover to preview, click to jump, star to bookmark. Built with official --dsw-* tokens for seamless integration with the DSH ecosystem.
DSH Lifeline is a persistent DSH bundle plugin built on the Cordis composition model. It renders a vertical navigation rail on the right side of the conversation page, with per-message tick marks that track your scroll position in real time. Hovering expands a preview drawer; clicking jumps to any historical message with smooth scrolling. The rail dynamically avoids other right-side panels (widgets, sidebar, etc.) and slides in/out with a coordinated animation when panels open or close.
Features
Navigation Rail
| Capability | Detail |
|---|
| Per-message ticks | Every user message generates one tick mark on the vertical rail |
| Scroll-spy highlight | The tick nearest to your current reading position lights up in brand blue |
| Center-axis alignment | The rail's center axis aligns with the message layout's content edge — no content occlusion |
| Always visible | Stays pinned on the right side; auto-hides when the session has < 2 user messages |
| Narrow-screen adaptive | Auto-hides at viewport ≤ 767px (mobile / narrow windows) |
Hover Preview Drawer
| Capability | Detail |
|---|
| Hover to expand | Mousing over the rail expands a 260px-wide preview drawer with message text |
| Smooth slide | The drawer slides in from the right with a CSS transition (interruptible) |
| Click to jump | Clicking any item smoothly scrolls the chat to that message (loads older history on demand) |
| Star bookmarks | Click ★ to star a message; starred ticks glow gold in the collapsed rail; "★ Marked only" filter in the drawer |
| Virtualized list | Drawer uses a virtual list (30px row height); smooth even with thousands of turns |
| Official tokens | Background --dsw-alias-bg-layer-1, border --dsw-alias-border-l2, shadow --dsw-shadow-lv3 — matches DSH input box / widget panels in both themes |
Realtime Slide Animation
| Capability | Detail |
|---|
| Frame-by-frame sync | When a right-side panel (widgets, sidebar) opens or closes, the rail follows the conversation-area width change every frame |
| 220ms ease-out tween | Smooth entry/exit with interruptible animation — rapid open→close→open animates seamlessly |
| Content-flow reference | Positioning uses the conversation content-flow container's live rect; no stale overlay caches |
Session Index + Rewind
| Capability | Detail |
|---|
| Full session index | Host REST endpoint (/api/chat-timeline-index) serves the complete user-message index with incremental pushes |
| No page-load needed | Long conversations show every historical tick without paging through "load earlier" |
| Rewind integration | Withdrawn / rewound messages are automatically removed from the timeline via dsh-rewind |
Panel Avoidance
| Capability | Detail |
|---|
| Dynamic right-edge tracking | Detects right-side workbenches (dsh-better-sidebar, dsh-widgets, aionui) and shifts to align |
| Multi-panel aware | Handles two overlapping right panels simultaneously |
Architecture
- Host half (
lib/index.js): registers the dshChatTimeline session projection + REST index endpoint (/api/chat-timeline-index) for full-history access;
- Client half (
lib/client.js): exports { name, inject, apply } via window.__ModuleLoader__; the TimelineRail component is mounted on the conversation.input.dock slot and portal-rendered to document.body;
- Positioning engine: measures the content-flow container's
getBoundingClientRect() every frame; the rail center axis targets the layout's padding-box right edge (e.g. Md3f7G_scroll's 32px right padding);
- Styling: all surfaces use
--dsw-* semantic tokens — no hard-coded rgba, automatic light/dark adaptation;
- Data pipeline: REST incremental index → session projection → loaded chat nodes → on-demand
loadOlder (fastest first).
Installation
via npm (recommended)
dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-lifeline
Then restart dsh web and hard-refresh the browser.
local development (link)
# 1. Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/Physicolor/dsh-lifeline.git
# 2. Link in your profile
# In $DSH_HOME/profiles/web/package.json, add:
# "dsh-lifeline": "link:../../plugins/dsh-lifeline"
cd $DSH_HOME/profiles/web && pnpm install
# 3. Restart dsh web
Changelog
v0.1.0 (2026-09-01)
Initial release as an independent project (formerly dsh-chat-timeline):
- Rewritten positioning engine — frame-by-frame follow of the content-flow container's live rect; compatible with
dsh-better-sidebar / dsh-widgets / aionui panel avoidance
- Full session index — host REST endpoint serves complete message history with incremental pushes; no need to page through "load earlier"
- Virtualized rendering — drawer virtual list + tick neighbourhood slice; smooth on thousands of turns
- Center-axis alignment — rail center axis aligns with
Md3f7G_scroll padding-box right edge (previously offset by the content padding)
- Realtime slide animation — frame-by-frame sync with panel open/close; 220ms ease-out tween with interrupt support
- Official-token styling — drawer and collapsed capsule use
--dsw-* tokens (layer-1 / border-l2 / shadow-lv2 / shadow-lv3); dual-theme adaptive, no hard-coded rgba
Acknowledgments
This project builds on source code from jjxjjjjiik-bot/dsh-chat-timeline (MIT). The plugin architecture was originally modeled on asukasec/dsh-message-preview (MIT).
License
MIT © Physicolor