🎨 dsh-genui

Give the model's answers a face — the text is still there, and an interactive UI is already live.

🔌 Ecosystem: the repo carries the #dsh · #dsh-plugin topics — welcome to be listed by @dsh-plugin.

The model no longer just answers in text. Install this plugin, ask "how are this month's orders doing", and it renders a clickable data panel right inside the answer as it analyzes: watch trends, drag sliders, hit refresh — and the model actually responds.

Real output: an interactive monitoring panel rendered by the model (click "refresh" and it regenerates the data)

Player won't load? Download the mp4. Four-act demo script: demo-prompts.md.

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⚠️ Read this first: dual-channel rendering (works with any dsh build)

The plugin ships two rendering channels and picks one automatically at startup — no dependency on a specific host version:

• Registry channel: when the host exposes the fence-registry extension point (newer dsh builds), fences register through the host's streaming render pipeline and behave seamlessly with the host;
• DOM channel: when the host lacks that extension point (including stock DSH and older builds), the plugin observes the session DOM and mounts its own render tree. Since 0.7.2 it supports streaming rendering: components appear as the model writes them — the first finished component shows up immediately, no need to wait for the whole reply.

Whichever channel is active, components, interactions, panels, and persistence behave identically.

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✨ Before vs. after

Plain answer	With dsh-genui
"Revenue this month: ¥128,430, +12.4% MoM — watch the conversion rate."	One line of analysis + three stat cards (revenue / orders / conversion), a trend chart, and a progress bar rendered right beside it
Want to see more? Type another question.	The panel already has "Refresh" / "Switch view" buttons — click, and the model updates the data

🚀 Quick start

Prerequisites — all required:

1. dsh installed (any open-source build works — the plugin picks its rendering channel at startup, see "dual-channel rendering" above)
2. pnpm on your PATH: the dsh plugin command depends on it. If missing: corepack enable (or npm i -g pnpm), then open a new terminal and confirm pnpm -v prints a version

Install (one command, all dependencies included):

# Public GitHub install (works without an npm account)
dsh plugin --profile web add git+https://github.com/omdsh-dev/dsh-genui.git

⚠️ Don't use link: on a freshly cloned directory — link: does not install the plugin's dependencies (mermaid / three / react), so the renderer will break. Use the git URL form above; reserve link: for local development iteration (see below).

Restart dsh web + hard refresh, then in a new session say "use dsh-ui to draw a stats dashboard" to verify.

One-click script (recommended)

After cloning, just run it — the script checks the prerequisites above, performs the install, and prompts you to restart:

git clone https://github.com/omdsh-dev/dsh-genui.git
cd dsh-genui
./scripts/install.sh

Developer iteration (link mode)

cd dsh-genui
pnpm install
dsh plugin --profile web add link:$PWD

🧩 What it can do

• Answer-as-UI: components are embedded in the reply and appear as they stream — no waiting for the whole message
• 30+ components: cards, tables, charts, forms, tabs, accordions, file trees, timelines, diffs…
• Function plots: plot draws curves; parameter sliders redraw in real time, with optional auto-animation

• Quiz: quiz grades on click with explanation and retry; with action, the answer is also sent back to the model (grading stays local and instant)
• Local grading (submit): a multiple-choice set = one radio per question with group + answer (correct answer) + explanation, plus one submit button — after the user answers everything and clicks once, the score, per-question right/wrong, and explanations appear right in the UI with zero model round-trips; the quiz then locks, and "retake" resets locally (optional resetAction notifies the model). Questions without an answer fall back to an aggregated action (fields collects every input with an id)
• State persistence: answers, submission locks, and input values are saved per "session + content fingerprint" — refresh or reopen restores everything; re-rendering identical content keeps user state; new content starts fresh; LRU cap of 200 blocks
• Form semantics: input Enter / textarea Ctrl+Enter submits immediately (submit:true), no blur needed; fields with an id are collected into the submit's fields
• Secrets ban: GenUI must never ask for passwords, API keys, access tokens, recovery codes, or other secrets; even if a password input appears, it stays masked, is never persisted, and never enters form collection
• Local-first principle: state changes the UI can do itself (grading, quiz checking, resets, expand/collapse, selection) always happen locally and instantly; actions are reserved for things that genuinely need the model (generating new content, running tools, next-step suggestions)
• Honest interactions: interactive components must carry action; buttons without one render disabled (kills the "looks clickable, does nothing" fake button); buttons with action show instant "triggered" local feedback (proof the local event fired, not that the model received it)
• Event loop: buttons/switches/inputs/dropdowns/checkboxes/radios/textareas/quizzes carry action; click or blur sends back to the model, which updates the UI; same-name actions are debounced with a 300 ms trailing edge — rapid clicks merge into one (last value wins)
• Tool channel: the render_ui tool renders the same spec as a card in the tool row (deliverable-style UI goes through the tool, answer-style UI through the fence)
• Session panel: a persistent dock above the composer; render_ui / panel: true fences update the same surface in place; /panel opens it from the client (/panel <instruction> customizes via the model, /panel clear clears); the top border is draggable to resize; append: true merges incrementally — same-named tabs append content, new tabs get added; the whole panel caps at 200 nodes / 200 appends, after which the model should send replace to rebuild
• Self-healing & limits: every fence passes a spec guard — bad nodes are silently dropped, numbers clamped, strings truncated; the whole tree is capped at 200 nodes / 8 nesting levels; pathological specs never crash the UI
• Chart error self-healing: mermaid failures auto-retry with repairs (strip backticks, quote Chinese/space labels, remove <br/>) before degrading to source; a broken chart never hits the screen
• Accessibility: tabs/accordions/switches/progress bars carry full ARIA and keyboard navigation (arrow keys switch tabs, Home/End jump)
• Zero intrusion: without the plugin, fences are just code blocks — no errors, no session pollution

Component JSON syntax: SKILL.md (also copyable to ~/.dsh/skills/genui/ to boost the model).

📄 Example

The model outputs this fence (written for the browser — you don't need to read it):

{"title":"Order overview","items":[
  {"type":"stat","label":"Total revenue","value":"¥128,430","delta":"+12.4%"},
  {"type":"stat","label":"Orders","value":"1,024","delta":"-3.1%"}
]}

What you see: two stat cards.

🔧 How it works

The model writes the interface description as JSON inside a dsh-ui fence; the browser-side renderer (src/client) claims this language through the main repo's fence-registry interface and renders it. Components are whitelisted — the model can't smuggle in HTML/scripts; function expressions go through a standalone parser, never eval.

The core render package stays light (≈110 KB min / 28 KB gzip); the mermaid and three.js engines are bundled separately as on-demand assets (loaded through the plugin's self-registered HTTP routes the first time they're used), so startup only downloads the rendering core.

❓ FAQ

• Rendering as a code block? Check three things: your dsh build has fence-registry (see "dual-channel rendering" at the top — builds without the extension point fall back to the DOM channel), dsh plugin --profile web list shows this plugin, restart + hard refresh.
• Chat UI goes blank when rendering a dsh-ui fence? Your dsh is too old — update dsh first, then reinstall the plugin.
• dsh: pnpm not found on PATH? Install pnpm, then open a new terminal and retry (corepack enable or npm i -g pnpm).
• Stuck on git credentials / 404 during install? The repo is public (omdsh-dev/dsh-genui) — the git URL above needs no login; a 404 for @omdsh-dev/dsh-genui means the npm package has not been published yet.
• Installed but scene3d/mermaid don't render? The engines (mermaid / three) are no longer inlined in client.js — they load on demand the first time they're used (/plugins/@omdsh-dev/dsh-genui/assets/*.js, hosted by the plugin's own HTTP routes). First restart dsh web + hard refresh (Cmd+Shift+R); still broken, remove and reinstall (dsh plugin --profile web remove @omdsh-dev/dsh-genui, then add again). Hosts without the asset routes degrade to source/load-error hints — update dsh.
• Model not outputting fences? New sessions pick it up after a restart; or just say "output it with dsh-ui".
• No lib/ after cloning? Build it yourself: pnpm install && pnpm run check.

🧑‍💻 Development

pnpm install
pnpm run check   # type check + full tests + build

Real-device e2e

The real chain end to end: start a temporary dsh web → install the plugin → send a message in a browser so the model outputs a dsh-ui fence → assert the rendering → click an action button → assert the model responds (event-loop closure):

DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=sk-... node scripts/e2e.mjs          # link-installs the current workspace
DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=sk-... node scripts/e2e.mjs --install git   # friend path (git URL)

Prereqs: dsh/pnpm on PATH, DEEPSEEK_API_KEY, and the main repo's web build output (playwright resolves it from the main repo). On PASS it saves an e2e-final.png screenshot.

🗺️ Roadmap (evaluated)

Direction	Verdict	Rationale
Incremental patching (model sends diffs, not full specs)	Not doing	A fence costs 200–800 tokens; resending is nearly free; a patch protocol's teaching cost and error rate aren't worth it. Revisit if sub-second auto-refreshing panels ever appear
Action debounce/dedup	✅ Done (300 ms trailing edge, per action name)	Rapid-click spam is real friction; one choke point
Cross-session state persistence (replay restores tabs/switches)	Not doing	Replay-reset is the more correct default (the model has already updated the UI with a new fence); state survives naturally during streaming
MCP adapter / standalone gallery page / i18n	Not doing	No cross-tool demand signal; gallery material is covered by gallery.ts + demo-prompts + README screenshots; only 6 built-in strings

Tests parse the dsh source (vitest.config.ts's DSH_ROOT, default ~/.dsh/source/current).

🔗 Friendly links

• Linux.do

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📄 License: MIT