DeepSeek Harness Desktop

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A community-maintained Windows desktop distribution of DeepSeek Harness, with a native window, one-click installer, private bundled runtime, and no terminal to keep open.

This repository is maintained by evanmormmm and is not an official DeepSeek release. DeepSeek Harness is developed by DeepSeek AI and remains available under the MIT License.

Download the latest Windows installer →

What you get

• Double-click startup: launch from the Start menu or desktop without PowerShell, pnpm, or a browser tab.
• Native lifecycle: one WinForms/WebView2 window owns one private Harness backend and shuts it down when the window closes.
• Existing Harness features: sessions, workspaces, plugins, tools, permissions, model settings, and $DSH_HOME data work through the upstream Web UI.
• Windows release assets: each release provides an installer, a portable ZIP, and SHA256SUMS.txt.
• Verified packaging: the release build tests the deployed backend, real WebView page load, graceful shutdown, silent installation, and uninstallation.

Install

1. Open the latest release.
2. Download DeepSeek-Harness-Desktop-<version>-win-x64-Setup.exe.
3. Verify it against SHA256SUMS.txt, run the installer, then open DeepSeek Harness from the Start menu.
4. Open Settings → Models to add your DeepSeek API key, then choose a workspace and create a session.

The current community binaries are not Authenticode-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may identify the publisher as unknown. See the illustrated Windows guide for screenshots, the portable edition, prerequisites, architecture, removal, troubleshooting, and source builds.

Architecture

The native host embeds the existing Harness Web client instead of creating another chat implementation. It starts the bundled Node runtime on exact IPv4 loopback with a random port, validates the child and HTML endpoint, gives WebView2 access to that one origin, and joins bounded profile disposal on close.

Build from source

pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm run desktop:build
pnpm run desktop:package

The release assets are written to .artifacts/desktop-release/. Development requires Windows x64, Node ^22.19 || >=24, pnpm, the .NET 8 SDK, WebView2 Runtime, and Inno Setup 6. Installed users do not need the development toolchain.

Upstream and maintenance

This repository preserves the upstream Git history and keeps upstream pointed at deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness. The desktop host is intentionally a thin product layer under apps/desktop; upstream Harness packages remain structurally unchanged apart from the desktop process entry required to boot the assembled Web profile.

For Harness architecture and plugin development, read AGENTS.md, the development guide, and the architecture documentation.

License

MIT. Third-party dependencies and their licenses are disclosed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md and in each desktop release.