U-DSH Portable — DeepSeek Harness Portable / USB Edition for Windows

No-install portable build of DeepSeek Harness (DSH): unzip and run. No Node.js, no npm, no
kernel download. Drop it on a USB stick or external drive, double-click on any Windows PC, and
your sessions, credentials and workspace travel with the folder — nothing lands on C:.

Why U-DSH?

What makes it different: it comes with credit. No API key signup required.

Every other DSH portable/desktop build asks you to register at platform.deepseek.com, top up, copy an
API key and paste it back — the steepest drop-off in the whole funnel. U-DSH ships the Xiapan Cloud
device wallet: on first launch it issues a key for this device and wires it up automatically, so you
can just start chatting. Top up with one click, or swap in your own key any time.

Features

• ✅ Zero-install portable — bundled Node.js runtime plus the complete @deepseek-ai/dsh
  dependency closure; the target machine needs nothing preinstalled
• ✅ Works offline — the kernel ships inside the package; first launch needs no network
• ✅ Credit out of the box — device wallet, no signup, no API key hunting
• ✅ USB portable — sessions, settings, credentials and workspace all live next to the executable
• ✅ Leaves no trace — no registry writes, no environment changes, nothing in %USERPROFILE%
• ✅ Headless-callable — every business action has a stable Action ID for CLI / MCP / API
  (ActionParity AP-2)
• ✅ MIT licensed — the client is fully auditable and self-buildable

Quick start

1. Grab U-DSH-DeepSeek-Harness-Portable-*-Windows-x64.zip from Releases
2. Unzip to a USB stick, external drive or local folder (USB drives must be NTFS — see FAQ)
3. Double-click U-DSH Portable.exe

📖 First time? The beginner's guide walks through download → USB prep → first chat, step by step (in Chinese).

⏳ First unzip is slow. The package contains tens of thousands of small files; on a slow drive
this can take upwards of ten minutes. Startup afterwards is instant. Unzip to a local disk first,
confirm it runs, then copy the folder to your USB drive.

Scope

Windows x64 only for now. macOS and Linux are not supported — those build targets are gated off so
a kernel-less package can never be produced by accident.

U-DSH Portable is unofficial. It does not modify the DSH Web UI or duplicate its business logic; it
reuses the official DeepSeek Harness and the
community deepseek-harness-desktop, adding
only portable data boundaries, the vendored kernel, the device wallet and a headless action interface.

Thin shell, replaceable kernel

DSH is evolving quickly, so U-DSH keeps durable USB data separate from high-churn host caches:

The kernel (a pinned Node runtime plus the full @deepseek-ai/dsh dependency closure) is vendored into the release package at build time by npm run prepare:vendor. End-user machines never run npm and never download a byte: startup only resolves and validates the bundled kernel (package identity/version/entry/required-peer checks, milliseconds, fully offline). config/runtime-channel.json is the single version source; the Node archive is SHA-256 verified and the DSH root package integrity is checked against official npm metadata — both at build time. Update checking reports npm tags but never installs anything; when the network is unreachable it degrades to "unknown" without failing startup. See docs/vendored-kernel.md.

Device wallet

The first online launch requests a random Xiapan Cloud key, stores wallet state on the USB drive, and configures DSH through one .credentials.yaml/settings.yaml adapter. The wallet UI supports balance checks, copy, recharge, verified key adoption, two-phase key rotation, and local-only wallet removal.

Xiapan Cloud is the ready-to-use default for new users, not an exclusive provider. The official DSH provider settings remain available for DeepSeek's official API or other OpenAI-compatible services, and an existing non-Xiapan default provider is never overwritten.

Storage corruption, a read-only USB drive, or temporary network failure does not block DSH startup. Administrative secrets and balance authority must remain server-side because all client code is inspectable.

Machine interface (ActionParity)

GUI and CLI share one headless action core. The Windows package includes U-DSH-CLI.cmd at its root:

.\U-DSH-CLI.cmd list --json
.\U-DSH-CLI.cmd wallet.status --json

Secrets are rejected in command-line flags and ordinary JSON output. Adopt a key through stdin or a file:

'{"apiKey":"sk-..."}' | .\U-DSH-CLI.cmd wallet.key.adopt --input-json - --json

Destructive CLI actions require an explicit --yes.

Develop and build

Node.js 22+ is required:

npm install
npm test
npm run action-parity:check-generated
npm run action-parity:verify
npm run shadowfork:contract
npm run prepare:vendor   # build machine only: stages the Node runtime + DSH closure into vendor/
npm run dist:portable    # gated by prepare-vendor --check; refuses to build a shell without the kernel

The result is dist/U-DSH-DeepSeek-Harness-Portable-<version>-Windows-x64.zip. Building the vendor closure requires network access on the build machine; the packaged app runs fully offline (device-wallet features excepted).

Forking with ShadowFork

• .shadowfork/profile.yaml records U-DSH's customizations relative to the community desktop upstream.
• .shadowfork/upstream.yaml publishes U-DSH's downstream derivation contract: identity fields, protected boundaries, extension points, and attribution.

Prefer additions under src/extensions/, change the pinned kernel only when building a new release, and regenerate rather than manually edit ActionParity outputs.

FAQ

It won't. DSH creates a directory junction under its data directory on every launch, and
exFAT/FAT32 cannot hold one — it fails with EISDIR. U-DSH probes for this before starting and tells
you to switch to NTFS instead of throwing a raw error at you. Back up the drive before reformatting.

The package carries DSH's full dependency closure — tens of thousands of small files. The bottleneck
is file count, not size, so a slow drive can take ten minutes or more. That is the price of "nothing
to install, works offline": we ran the install at build time so you never have to. Every launch after
that is instant.

Yes. The wallet page has a "use an existing key" option, and you can switch back at any time.

No registry writes, no environment changes. Sessions, settings, credentials and workspace all live
next to the executable — deleting the folder is a complete uninstall. (Electron's own window cache and
logs go to the system cache directory and contain no credentials.)

Right-click the tray icon -> "Report a problem", or use the button on the wallet page. It gathers
the version, kernel status and a log excerpt (keys redacted) and opens a pre-filled GitHub
issue; just add a sentence describing what happened. To read the logs yourself: Win + R ->
%LOCALAPPDATA%\U-DSH\logs. They live in the system cache directory and do not travel with the USB drive
(they contain no credentials).

No. This is an independent community distribution, not affiliated with DeepSeek.

Sources and licenses

U-DSH Portable is MIT licensed — use, modify, sell and redistribute the client freely.
The desktop base and official DSH are MIT-licensed; the vendored ActionParity snapshot is retained
under Apache-2.0. The release package includes libvips (LGPL-3.0-or-later), shipped as replaceable
standalone DLLs. See NOTICE.md and third-party-licenses for full
attribution and verbatim license texts.

Trademarks

The MIT license covers the code, not the names or logos.
U-DSH, U-Claw, Xiapan Cloud / 虾盘云 and the associated icons are project trademarks and
are not granted along with the code license.

Fork it, modify it, sell it — but please ship under your own name and icon. Don't distribute your
build as U-DSH or Xiapan Cloud: users would mistake it for this project and send you our support load
(and us yours). Xiapan Cloud credit is served only to official builds.