tvision — the Borland IDE reborn as a window manager for dsh agents

[hongxin]

tvision — a Turbo Vision-style character-cell window manager for DeepSeek Harness agents. The Borland IDE, reborn for the agent era: overlapping windows with drop shadows, a menu bar floating above everything, a function-key strip generated from the keymap (so the legend cannot lie about the keys), a fixed one-line composer, and full mouse support — drag a title bar to move, drag the brightened corner to resize, click [■] to close.

The reasoning: an agent's activity is already a stream of file edits, shell commands, diffs, task lists, and subagents — which is what Borland built this interface for in the first place, minus the debugger. So the desktop gives each of those a home: a Conversation window with a one-character gutter (> you, | the agent, · reasoning, ~ a tool, ! an error — the shape of a turn is visible before its words), a Project window, a live Tasks window, Sessions, Jobs — and approvals and questions as real modal windows with the same keyboard and mouse as everything else.

• Repo: https://github.com/hongxin/dsh-tvision (MIT; carries the dsh-plugin topic)
• Install: dsh plugin --profile tvision add hongxin/dsh-tvision, then dsh --profile tvision — an ordinary Cordis plugin bundle, not a fork, so the whole plugin ecosystem applies and sessions resume.
• Five skins ship: the Borland blue, P1 green phosphor, P3 amber CRT, a modern dark, and a One-Dark-style ANSI that inherits your terminal's own sixteen colours.
• The GIF above is a real pty capture — every frame in it is what a real terminal actually drew.

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中文版

tvision — 给 DeepSeek Harness 智能体的 Turbo Vision 式字符窗口管理器。带投影的重叠窗口、浮于一切的菜单栏、由键位表生成的功能键提示条（提示不会说谎）、固定单行的输入框、完整鼠标支持——拖标题栏移动，拖亮色角缩放，点 [■] 关闭。

为什么这么做：智能体的活动本来就是文件编辑、shell 命令、diff、任务列表、子智能体——这正是当年 Borland 为之设计这套界面的东西，只少了调试器。于是每样都有了自己的窗口：对话区（一个字符的装订地：> 你、| 智能体、· 思考、~ 工具、! 错误——对话的形状先于文字可见）、项目窗口、实时任务窗口、会话与后台作业；审批与提问也是正经的模态窗口，与全局同一套键盘和鼠标。

• 仓库：https://github.com/hongxin/dsh-tvision （MIT，已带 dsh-plugin topic）
• 安装：dsh plugin --profile tvision add hongxin/dsh-tvision，然后 dsh --profile tvision——普通 Cordis 插件包而非 fork，插件生态全兼容，会话可恢复。
• 五套皮肤：Borland 蓝、P1 磷光绿、P3 琥珀、现代深色、以及继承终端自带十六色的 One Dark 风 ANSI。
• 上面的动图是真 pty 采集——每一帧都是真实终端画出来的。

Would love feedback — especially from anyone using dsh daily: what's missing before this could be your daily driver?

[hongxin]

This started as a "just for fun" nostalgia trip, but the more I use it, the more it feels like a genuinely productive way to watch agents work. Would love to hear your feedback—any suggestions or wild ideas are welcome!

[hongxin]

Update — tool breakpoints shipped (and the demo GIF at the top of this post is now recorded against the real profile, breakpoint included).

/breakpoint bash(rm *)     # matching calls stop in a modal: Y once · a this session · n refuses
/breakpoint bash --deny    # refuse outright, no dialog
Ctrl+B                     # the rules window: toggle, delete, hit counts

A breakpoint holds the call at the harness's tools/pre-execute waterfall — before it runs. A pass-through delegates, so every later gate (approvals included) still gets its turn; a refusal short-circuits, and the model is told the call was denied. Patterns match the one-line label the transcript already shows (bash(rm *), fs(src/*), *(curl*)), rules persist beside the skin in $DSH_HOME/settings.yaml, and parallel matching calls queue behind one dialog instead of preempting each other into silent denials.

The wire rung of the test ladder now covers it end to end against the scripted endpoint: rule set → call held → y runs it → second call refused on n → the denial comes back to the model as the tool result. Same repo, same dsh plugin --profile tvision add hongxin/dsh-tvision.

中文一句话：工具断点已发布——/breakpoint <模式> 让匹配的工具调用在运行前停进模态框（Y 一次 / a 本会话 / n 拒绝），Ctrl+B 管理规则；放行走委托不绕过后续审批门，拒绝会作为工具结果回给模型。

[hongxin]

Update — v0.2.0 is out: markdown that reads, and the seams deepened

Since the breakpoints update, the transcript stopped being a printout and started being a terminal worth reading:

• GFM tables render truly aligned — columns measured to their widest cell, alignment read off the delimiter row, a dim │ between columns — and stack as header: value cards when the measure can't hold them. A ☔ column no longer shears its table either (bare BMP emoji cost one column in real terminals, not two).
• Headings render as a colour ladder on a new heading palette role — ## underlines as a section, ### stands plain, deeper levels dim. The literal ### never reaches the screen.
• The status bar reads the token-meter projection — the same replay compaction reads — so it now shows the cache column (⇄) and the provider-reported context pressure instead of hand-rolled approximations.
• /attach carries files to the model as durable attachments — content-addressed through the composition's attachment store, riding exactly one message. The model receives the file itself, not a path it has to be trusted to open.
• Resuming a session now shows its history — --resume and the Sessions window both land on the persisted transcript, not an empty one.

Full notes in the CHANGELOG; v0.2.0 release.

[hongxin]

Update — v0.3.0 is out: every seam has a surface

Since v0.2.0, tvision closed the remaining interactive seams between a human and the harness:

• Subagents, visible. A delegated child is a window, not a buried tool card — the Subagents window lists the catalog, Enter opens the child's own transcript, and running markers flip live. The parent's conversation and the child's sit in overlapping framed windows at once, which is the thing a line renderer cannot do.
• Plan mode, end to end. The review dialog renders the plan as the markdown it is; questions take free-text answers (Other…), so "keep planning, and here is why" finally has a why; the prompt reads dsh plan> across turns; and the Plan window keeps the approved plan readable for the whole execution that follows.
• Skills and cross-session references. The workspace's skill catalog is browsable and callable (/name injects the canonical skill-invocation message), and @-mentions reference other sessions — the harness attaches a bounded read-only snapshot the transcript folds in as Recall.

The wire rung now tells the whole story: twelve scripted turns through the real harness, 22 checks. Full notes in the CHANGELOG; v0.3.0 release.

[hongxin]

Update — v0.4.0: the Messages wire, update awareness, and the workspace as a tree

• Adapted to dsh 0.1.7 — the DeepSeek adapter moved to the Messages API (/v1/messages, Anthropic-style SSE), and tvision rides it green: the wire rung now verifies 22 checks on the new stack, including delegation, plan review with typed feedback, and a resume boot that must show its history.
• The desktop now knows when it's out of date. One GitHub check a day at boot, a status cell and a one-per-version notice when a newer release is out — and /update hands the terminal to the update command, then restarts into the same session. A failed update restarts the old version; a dirty exit never leaves a dead screen.
• The Project window shows the workspace as a folded tree — directories with ▸/▾ markers, two spaces of indent per depth, Enter to open a folder or reference a file into the composer.

Full notes in the CHANGELOG; v0.4.0 release.