WhaleBuddy: DeepSeek Harness Desktop Pet Plugin

Introduction¶

DeepSeek Harness (DSH) emphasizes plugin-based extensibility. whalebuddy is a desktop pet plugin that maps the runtime status of DSH agent sessions onto a whale porthole on the desktop. This plugin includes a perception-layer plugin (running in the DSH process) and a desktop shell (Tauri application), synchronizing state in real time over WebSocket.

Core Features¶

1. Status awareness: The pet window reflects agent session state in real time. It “works” when a task is running, “sleeps” when idle, and “knocks” to prompt when approval is pending.
2. Interaction management: Double-click the whale to manage the to-do list for the currently focused workspace (project).
3. Personalization: Supports autostart at login and skin changes.
4. Transparent always-on-top: The desktop shell is a transparent always-on-top window that does not cover the main operation area.

Installation and Enablement¶

Installing the perception-layer plugin requires the DSH Plugin CLI.

dsh plugin --profile web add github:2DogsLee/dsh_whalebuddy

After installation, the bundle is loaded only when DSH starts, so you need to restart DSH.

The desktop shell (pet window) is a standalone Tauri application (Windows only). After installing the perception layer, clone the repository and run the build under the app/src-tauri directory.

cd app/src-tauri
cargo build
Start-Process .\target\debug\dsh-pet.exe

Configuration and Usage¶

After the pet window starts, configure it using the following methods:

1. DSH GUI configuration: Find the “🐋 Desktop Pet whalebuddy” card in DSH GUI under Settings → Plugins → Plugin Configuration.
2. Right-click menu: Right-click the pet window and choose “🐋 whalebuddy Settings…”.

Available configuration items:
* autostart: Autostart the pet at login (save while the pet process is online to write the registry).
* launchOnDshStart: Automatically launch the pet when DSH starts.
* petPath: Full path to the pet exe. Leave blank to auto-discover from the registry.
* skin: Skin ID. Defaults to dsh-black-whale.

Dependencies and Environment¶

• Platform support: The desktop shell currently supports Windows 10/11 only. The perception-layer plugin theoretically works on macOS/Linux but has not been tested, and the desktop shell is not adapted.
• Runtime dependency: Windows 10/11 usually ships with the WebView2 runtime.
• Build dependencies:
  • Rust/MSVC: Required only for building the pet shell.
  • Node.js: Required by the perception-layer plugin; version must be ≥ 18.

Notes¶

• The plugin runs with the permissions of the current DSH process.
• Autostart is implemented by writing to the registry key HKCU\...\Run\whalebuddy. Ensure the pet process is online when saving the configuration.
• Port discovery depends on the netstat command. Ensure the DSH process is running and not using a non-default port configuration.