dsh-cookie-guard

A tiny fix for DeepSeek Harness Desktop: it caps the lifetime of the desktop browser-session cookies (dsh-auth-*) from the default 30 days to 7 days, so stale cookies can no longer pile up and overflow the request header — a failure that prevents the app from starting at all.

• Declarative bundle patch only; no runtime code, no changes to the installed app, no Electron main-process hacks.
• Survives app updates (it lives in your profile, not in app.asar).
• Ships a standalone cleanup script for machines that are already stuck.

Symptom

At launch the app shows:

DeepSeek Harness is unavailable
The application could not start or stopped unexpectedly.

The diagnostic report (%APPDATA%\@deepseek-ai\dsh-desktop\logs\crash-*-host.log) contains either:

desktop welcome: Web authentication failed

or the host logs an HTTP 431 (Request Header Fields Too Large).

Root cause

Not an account, network or plugin issue — it is unbounded cookie growth:

1. @deepseek-ai/dsh-client-connection names its cookie "dsh-auth-" + sha256(host:port) — one cookie per authority, port included.
2. The Desktop Host always launches with --port 0 (main() in dsh-desktop-host), so every start gets a new random port.
3. Cookies default to cookieMaxAgeDays: 30 and nothing ever prunes them.
4. The Electron welcome page fetches with Chromium net.fetch, which sends every historical dsh-auth-* cookie in one Cookie header.
5. Node's maxHeaderSize defaults to 16 KB; one cookie is ≈200 B, so ~90 cookies overflow the header, the Host answers 431 and Electron throws desktop welcome: Web authentication failed.

Measured: 71 cookies (~12 KB) accumulated in 13 days were enough to reproduce. At 3–5 launches/day, any long-term desktop user hits this within a month. Web mode uses a fixed port and is unaffected — this is desktop-only, present in both 0.2.1-rc.3 and rc.5.

Install

Requires Node.js >= 22 and a DSH build that ships the desktop profile (0.2.1-rc.3 and later).

Option 1 — one command (recommended)

dsh plugin --profile desktop add dsh-cookie-guard

Then restart DeepSeek Harness. This is the same install path the community plugin markets use (dsh-plugin.org, dsh-market).

Option 2 — from source

dsh plugin --profile desktop add github:kevindawn11-hash/dsh-cookie-guard

Option 3 — manual profile install

cd $env:USERPROFILE\.dsh\profiles\desktop
pnpm add dsh-cookie-guard

Append "dsh-cookie-guard" to dsh.profile.bundles in the same package.json, then restart DeepSeek Harness.

Option 4 — cleanup only, no plugin

With DSH fully closed:

node tools/prune-cookies.mjs

The script backs up Network\Cookies, then deletes every dsh-auth-* row. The next launch issues a fresh cookie and the app recovers.

How it works

The package is just a bundle patch:

- id: connection
  config:
    cookieMaxAgeDays: 7

DSH applies bundle patches after @deepseek-ai/dsh-web-app, so this overrides the connection node's config. A 7-day lifetime means at most "launches in 7 days" cookies (< 35, ~7 KB), far from the 16 KB ceiling, while still covering sessions that stay open for a week.

Use 1 for a tighter cap (daily restarts, but sessions older than a day expire); increase it if you keep the app open longer.

Verify

After a restart:

node -e "const{DatabaseSync}=require('node:sqlite');const db=new DatabaseSync(process.env.APPDATA+'\\@deepseek-ai\\dsh-desktop\\Network\\Cookies');console.log(db.prepare(\"select name,expires_utc from cookies where name like 'dsh-auth-%'\").all())"

Chromium timestamps are microseconds since 1601.

Limitations

A plugin runs inside the Host process; it cannot read or delete the Electron main process's Chromium cookie store (exclusively locked at runtime). So a plugin can only cap growth, not clean history. A real fix belongs upstream — two minimal options are in docs/upstream-issue.md:

1. Electron main: remove stale dsh-auth-* cookies before host.start();
2. Connection service: name the cookie by host hash (127.0.0.1) so each start overwrites the same cookie instead of adding one.

Compatibility

| DSH Desktop | Status | | --- | --- | | 0.2.1-rc.3 | reproduces, patch works | | 0.2.1-rc.5 | reproduces, patch works |

Desktop (packaged Windows/macOS) only; CLI / dsh web is unaffected.

License

MIT