dsh-wsl-uia: Observing and Controlling the Windows UI from WSL

The philosophy of DeepSeek Harness is “everything is a plugin.” When developing agents in a WSL environment, operating the host Windows graphical interface usually requires bypassing permission isolation or setting up complex IPC channels. The dsh-wsl-uia plugin, introduced below, provides Windows UI Automation (UIA) observation and operation capabilities directly from inside WSL.

Plugin Positioning¶

This is a plugin maintained by user 173787247. It allows enumerating top-level windows in WSL, reading element trees within a controlled scope, and identifying elements using observation-based handles. It is part of dsh-wsl-kit.

Core Features¶

The plugin provides the following capabilities:

Enumerating top-level windows
Reading element trees within a controlled scope
Supporting observation-based handles
Finding controls by control type and actionability
Invoking controls by position or name

Installation¶

Install it using the official command:

dsh plugin --profile web add github:173787247/dsh-wsl-uia

Typical Usage¶

Operations are performed through the uia_tree command. The following are a few common invocation methods:

List all top-level windows:

uia_tree action=windows

Read the element tree structure of a specific process, limiting depth and element count:

uia_tree action=tree pid=1234 maxDepth=6 maxElements=200

Find actionable button controls:

uia_tree action=find controlType=Button actionableOnly=true

Applicable Scenarios and Notes¶

Environment Requirements¶

The plugin requires DeepSeek Harness to run inside WSL.
The host Windows system must have PowerShell available at the standard path (the plugin locates it automatically).

Technical Details¶

Handle Format: The handle carried by each element has a format such as 1790525657168.6. The number before the dot is the observation timestamp (epoch), which allows references based on older handles to remain identifiable.
Element Indices: While a window is alive, element indices are not stable unique identifiers; two traversals of the same tree may produce different index results.
Control Invocation: When invoking a control, prefer passing the expectName parameter to win_invoke instead of relying solely on position.

Compatibility¶

Plugin Version: dsh-wsl-uia 0.1.0
Dependency Requirement: DSH version ≥ 0.1.2
Runtime Environment: Node.js >= 18

Conclusion¶

With this plugin, cross-system UI operations can be performed within a WSL environment. For more details, refer to the catalog page or the GitHub repository.