dsh-boot-anim: Boot Sequence and UI Entrance Transition for DeepSeek Harness Desktop
gxpppp/dsh-boot-anim
A DSH plugin that adds a SteamOS-style seven-stage boot animation and layered UI entrance transition to the DeepSeek Harness desktop app, injected host-side with zero dependencies and no source changes.
dsh-boot-anim is a host-side interface plugin for DeepSeek Harness Desktop that fills the visual gap between power-on and a usable interface. Its seven-beat sequence strings black screen, whale reveal, two lines closing inward, outline tracing, center-line expansion, white-out and UI entrance into one continuous narrative lasting about 5.6 seconds, then hands off to interface elements that transition in from the outside inward, ring by ring. It follows the official plugin contract and delivers its animation script through the webserver index-injection channel with zero dependencies and zero source changes, so uninstalling restores everything; the outline reuses the upstream primitives vector path to match the sidebar icon by construction, and failures fall back to the default startup behavior.
How to Install
dsh plugin --profile web add github:gxpppp/dsh-boot-anim- Category
- UI & Experience
- Platform
- DSH Plugin
- Author
- gxpppp
- Distribution
- Plugin
dsh-boot-anim Key Features
dsh-boot-anim Repo Summary
What Does It Do?
DSH Desktop Boot Animation is a host-side DSH plugin for DeepSeek Harness that adds a SteamOS-style seven-beat boot sequence plus an outside-in, ring-by-ring UI entrance transition to the desktop app. It solves the blank, disconnected startup experience where the window sits black and then the interface simply pops in. The plugin follows the official DSH plugin contract and injects its animation script through the webserver index-injection channel, with zero dependencies and zero source changes, so uninstalling restores everything. It is maintained by gxpppp under the MIT license and was first published in 2026-10.
Core Features
- Seven-beat boot sequence: black screen, whale reveal, two lines closing inward, outline tracing, center-line expansion, white-out, and UI entrance, running about 5.6 seconds to match the official desktop-scene startup animation.
- Whale outline shared with the sidebar icon: the vector path is reused directly from the upstream primitives component instead of being redrawn, so the outline matches the interface icon by construction.
- Mount-aware reveal: after the outline finishes, the sequence waits for the app to actually mount (up to 9 seconds), so slow starts never end on a blank frame and fast starts are never held behind a black curtain.
- Buffer interlude: the whale fades, regroups and slides left while the official vector wordmark appears, with a diagonal light band sweeping across it while the backend is still loading.
- Ring-by-ring UI entrance: interface elements transition in from the outside inward, connecting seamlessly to the boot sequence.
- Safety net and fallback: if the animation fails, the app falls back to its default startup behavior per the official instructions and still becomes usable.
How to Use This Plugin?
Enable the plugin in DSH Desktop and restart the app; the full seven-beat sequence and UI entrance transition play on startup without touching any original files. To adjust pacing, change the motion tokens inside the plugin (per-beat durations and easing) rather than the application itself. If you do not want to restart just to check the result, the repository ships a headless-browser verification script that runs the same CSS and JS and writes frame-by-frame screenshots for comparison; that script depends on Playwright, whose location can be given via a parameter or an environment variable. To revert, uninstall it as described in the official instructions; the plugin never modifies the DSH installation directory.
How to Troubleshoot This Plugin?
- The animation never appears: confirm the plugin is loaded by the profile and that its injection lines actually reach the page; the desktop build does not render injection lines into the HTML but hands them to the frontend over IPC, so the animation will not start if the injection table is not in effect.
- The wordmark does not highlight when the light band sweeps: under screen blending, white over white stays white, which produces no visible effect, so a different compositing approach is required.
- The wordmark copy is scaled up and jumps to the top-left: the light-band layer must be positioned exactly like the wordmark layer; using a full-container inset scales the copy several times over.
- Dimming the wordmark during loading has no effect: inline styles are overridden by the entrance animation's final value, so a Web Animations API animation is needed instead.
- The stroke disappears when flattened into a line: stroke width shrinks with the transform, so the stroke must be kept non-scaling to remain a solid line while flattened.
This page is an independent rewrite of the plugin's official README — for authoritative documentation and the latest changes, refer to the source: gxpppp/dsh-boot-anim. The plugin is third-party code that runs on your machine once installed; inclusion does not imply endorsement — please review the source before installing.
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