dsh-cite-lens

dsh-cite-lens

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A DeepSeek Harness plugin for working on papers with the model, in the PDF you already have open.

• Select text in a PDF and ask about it. PDFs in the Files tab open with selectable text. Select a passage and send it to the chat you are in — quoted, tagged with the file and page.
• Click the model's citations. When the model cites [main.pdf p.7 "exact words"], the citation is a link: clicking it opens the PDF, scrolls to those words, and highlights them with a fading marker.
• /cite-links makes a chat back every claim about the paper with such a link — handy for reviewing a draft, or checking what the model changed after editing your LaTeX.

Everything stays on your machine. The PDF is rendered in your browser with PDF.js; nothing is uploaded, and the plugin itself never sends a message — it only fills in your message box.

Install

dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-cite-lens

Restart dsh web. PDFs you open from the Files tab now use Cite Lens. To go back to dsh's built-in PDF view, remove the plugin.

What you get

Select a passage, ask about it

Select text and a toolbar appears over it:

Button	Puts in your message box
Quote	the passage, tagged main.pdf · p.17, for you to write under
Ask	the passage, with the cursor waiting after Question:
Explain	the passage and a request to explain it
Check this	the passage and a request to check its claims against the paper

Each is added under whatever you have already typed, in the chat you are in. Nothing is sent until you send it.

Selection behaves like an editor's, not like a raw PDF text layer:

• it does not jump to the whole page when the cursor crosses the gap between lines or the margin;
• handles at both ends grow or shrink the selection, and snap to the nearest text;
• Shift+click extends or shrinks it; Shift+←/→ moves the end by a character, Shift+Alt+←/→ by a word.

Citations that open the PDF

The plugin adds a short note to each chat's system prompt describing the citation format, so the model can point at places like this:

The model writes	Clicking it
[p.7]	the PDF you are reading, page 7
[main.pdf p.7]	opens main.pdf (or switches to it) at page 7
[main.pdf "exact words"]	opens it, finds the words anywhere in the PDF, highlights them
[main.pdf p.7 "exact words"]	the same, searching page 7 first

The page is optional on purpose: after the model edits your LaTeX it rarely knows which page a sentence lands on, so it quotes the words and Cite Lens finds them. Matching is forgiving — line breaks, words hyphenated across lines, ligatures, curly quotes and case are all ignored — and works on pages that have not been drawn yet. If the words are not in the PDF (it has not been rebuilt since the edit, say), the link tells you so instead of jumping somewhere wrong.

Paths are relative to the chat's workspace ([build/main.pdf "…"]). A PDF that is not open is opened through dsh's Files tab. A bare [p.7] with nothing open reopens the PDF you used last.

/cite-links

/cite-links          toggle for this chat
/cite-links on|off   set it
/cite-links status   ask

While it is on, every message you send goes in with a short reminder asking the model to back each statement about the paper with a link — in prose, lists and tables alike. A link icon in the chat's top bar shows the state (with a dot when on) and toggles it with a click. The setting is per chat and survives a restart.

Requirements

• dsh 0.1.5-rc.2 or newer, web profile (dsh web). Developed against the 0.1.5 line and checked on 0.2.1-rc.3: the PDF preview registers as an external-band renderer with binaryExtensions: ['pdf'], which is the contract both lines share.
• Node.js 22 or newer
• A current browser. Citation links are underlined with the CSS Custom Highlight API; in a browser without it they still work when clicked, they just are not underlined. Tested in Chrome.

How it works

Piece	dsh seam
The PDF view	ctx.documentPreviews.register({ extensions: ['pdf'], priority: 'extension' }) and the keyed sidebar.right.tab.document slot — the external band ranks above the built-in view
Writing to your message box	the current chat (ctx.sessions.list) → its scope (ctx.sessions.scope) → ctx.conversation.input.for(scope): the draft is read and appended to, never replaced, and never touched while a message is sending
Opening a cited PDF	ctx.sidebarRight.openResource(address)
Citation links	text ranges painted with ::highlight() and hit-tested on click — the chat's DOM is never edited, so streaming replies are unaffected
The citation guide	a section in each chat's system prompt (agent/session-start)
/cite-links	a dsh command; while on, a reminder joins the step that carries your new prompt (agent/pre-step), once per prompt

Rendering stays smooth on long papers: pages are drawn one at a time nearest to where you are reading, first at 1× and then sharp once scrolling stops; far pages are freed; the text layer is built in idle time.

Development

npm install      # PDF.js and esbuild (dev only — there are no runtime dependencies)
npm run build    # src/client → lib/client.js
npm test         # quoting, chat insertion, citation parsing, /cite-links, PDF.js text

lib/client.js is generated: edit src/client/ and rebuild. It bundles PDF.js (Apache-2.0) and its worker, so the plugin needs no static file routes.

Licence

MIT — see LICENSE, which also carries the notice for the bundled PDF.js.