dsh-lifeline

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DSH Lifeline

Right-side message navigation rail for DeepSeek Harness.
Per-message tick marks · hover preview drawer · smooth jump · star bookmarks · realtime slide animation

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TL;DR: A persistent right-side rail that turns your conversation history into a navigable timeline — hover to preview, click to jump, star to bookmark. Built with official --dsw-* tokens for seamless integration with the DSH ecosystem.

DSH Lifeline is a persistent DSH bundle plugin built on the Cordis composition model. It renders a vertical navigation rail on the right side of the conversation page, with per-message tick marks that track your scroll position in real time. Hovering expands a preview drawer; clicking jumps to any historical message with smooth scrolling. The rail dynamically avoids other right-side panels (widgets, sidebar, etc.) and slides in/out with a coordinated animation when panels open or close.

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Features

Navigation Rail

Capability	Detail
Per-message ticks	Every user message generates one tick mark on the vertical rail
Scroll-spy highlight	The tick nearest to your current reading position lights up in brand blue
Center-axis alignment	The rail's center axis aligns with the message layout's content edge — no content occlusion
Always visible	Stays pinned on the right side; auto-hides when the session has < 2 user messages
Narrow-screen adaptive	Auto-hides at viewport ≤ 767px (mobile / narrow windows)

Hover Preview Drawer

Capability	Detail
Hover to expand	Mousing over the rail expands a 260px-wide preview drawer with message text
Smooth slide	The drawer slides in from the right with a CSS transition (interruptible)
Click to jump	Clicking any item smoothly scrolls the chat to that message (loads older history on demand)
Star bookmarks	Click ★ to star a message; starred ticks glow gold in the collapsed rail; "★ Marked only" filter in the drawer
Virtualized list	Drawer uses a virtual list (30px row height); smooth even with thousands of turns
Official tokens	Background --dsw-alias-bg-layer-1, border --dsw-alias-border-l2, shadow --dsw-shadow-lv3 — matches DSH input box / widget panels in both themes

Realtime Slide Animation

Capability	Detail
Frame-by-frame sync	When a right-side panel (widgets, sidebar) opens or closes, the rail follows the conversation-area width change every frame
220ms ease-out tween	Smooth entry/exit with interruptible animation — rapid open→close→open animates seamlessly
Content-flow reference	Positioning uses the conversation content-flow container's live rect; no stale overlay caches

Session Index + Rewind

Capability	Detail
Full session index	Host REST endpoint (/api/chat-timeline-index) serves the complete user-message index with incremental pushes
No page-load needed	Long conversations show every historical tick without paging through "load earlier"
Rewind integration	Withdrawn / rewound messages are automatically removed from the timeline via dsh-rewind

Panel Avoidance

Capability	Detail
Dynamic right-edge tracking	Detects right-side workbenches (dsh-better-sidebar, dsh-widgets, aionui) and shifts to align
Multi-panel aware	Handles two overlapping right panels simultaneously

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Architecture

• Host half (lib/index.js): registers the dshChatTimeline session projection + REST index endpoint (/api/chat-timeline-index) for full-history access;
• Client half (lib/client.js): exports { name, inject, apply } via window.__ModuleLoader__; the TimelineRail component is mounted on the conversation.input.dock slot and portal-rendered to document.body;
• Positioning engine: measures the content-flow container's getBoundingClientRect() every frame; the rail center axis targets the layout's padding-box right edge (e.g. Md3f7G_scroll's 32px right padding);
• Styling: all surfaces use --dsw-* semantic tokens — no hard-coded rgba, automatic light/dark adaptation;
• Data pipeline: REST incremental index → session projection → loaded chat nodes → on-demand loadOlder (fastest first).

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Installation

via npm (recommended)

dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-lifeline

Then restart dsh web and hard-refresh the browser.

local development (link)

# 1. Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/Physicolor/dsh-lifeline.git

# 2. Link in your profile
#    In $DSH_HOME/profiles/web/package.json, add:
#    "dsh-lifeline": "link:../../plugins/dsh-lifeline"
cd $DSH_HOME/profiles/web && pnpm install

# 3. Restart dsh web

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Changelog

v0.1.0 (2026-09-01)

Initial release as an independent project (formerly dsh-chat-timeline):

• Rewritten positioning engine — frame-by-frame follow of the content-flow container's live rect; compatible with dsh-better-sidebar / dsh-widgets / aionui panel avoidance
• Full session index — host REST endpoint serves complete message history with incremental pushes; no need to page through "load earlier"
• Virtualized rendering — drawer virtual list + tick neighbourhood slice; smooth on thousands of turns
• Center-axis alignment — rail center axis aligns with Md3f7G_scroll padding-box right edge (previously offset by the content padding)
• Realtime slide animation — frame-by-frame sync with panel open/close; 220ms ease-out tween with interrupt support
• Official-token styling — drawer and collapsed capsule use --dsw-* tokens (layer-1 / border-l2 / shadow-lv2 / shadow-lv3); dual-theme adaptive, no hard-coded rgba

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Acknowledgments

This project builds on source code from jjxjjjjiik-bot/dsh-chat-timeline (MIT). The plugin architecture was originally modeled on asukasec/dsh-message-preview (MIT).

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License

MIT © Physicolor