dsh-chatflow-rail: DSH Web Chat Conversation Flow Navigation and Quick Jump

In long chat histories in the DSH Web GUI, scrolling through the conversation to find earlier interaction points is often inefficient. The dsh-chatflow-rail plugin provides a conversation-flow navigation rail on the left, mapping the chat into a compact cluster of dashed lines to help locate content quickly.

What Is This¶

This is a client-side plugin maintained by veritas501. It adds a navigation rail to the left side of the DSH Web interface, where each user message corresponds to one dashed line, positioned 1:1 with the actual content; it also docks a “Previous Message” card near the top, solving the problem of quick jumping in long conversations.

Core Features¶

Left navigation rail: Draws a dashed line for each user message, presenting the conversation structure at a glance.
Hover preview: When hovering over the navigation rail, the dashed-line cluster expands smoothly (fan-out effect); the dashed lines near the pointer become thicker and darker and display a message preview.
Click to jump: Clicking a dashed line or the navigation rail area scrolls the view smoothly to the corresponding chat message.
Top card: When a user message scrolls beyond the top of the viewport, a floating “Previous Message” card is displayed, containing #N/M · time and a 3-line content preview.
Automatic expansion: The plugin automatically extends the DSH history window, ensuring the navigation rail covers the entire conversation, not just the rendered tail window.

Installation and Enabling¶

The plugin is a Git-hosted package, and its build scripts are blocked by pnpm by default, so dependency build allowance needs to be configured first.

Allow the build: Edit ~/.dsh/profiles/web/pnpm-workspace.yaml and add the following configuration:

    onlyBuiltDependencies:
      - dsh-chatflow-rail

Install the plugin:

    dsh plugin --profile web add github:veritas501/dsh-chatflow-rail

This runs the `prepare` script to build `lib/`.

Restart the service:

    dsh web

After restarting, refresh the browser page to apply the changes.

Typical Usage¶

Hover over the left navigation rail to view message previews and click to jump to a specific position.
When the conversation is long and you scroll to the top, use the floating “Previous Message” card to quickly return.

Applicable Scenarios and Notes¶

Applicable scenarios: Suitable for developers or users who need to frequently view or jump between long conversation histories.
Notes:
- dsh plugin behaves similarly to adding a dependency. If automatic addition does not take effect, manually add the package name to the dsh.profile.bundles list.
- Development: When developing the plugin locally, run pnpm build first to generate the lib directory, then install it using the local path.

The plugin simplifies navigation in long conversations by providing a conversation-map mechanism. For more details, refer to DSH Plugin Directory or the GitHub repository.