One-Line Pitch

dsh-vision-router is DeepSeek Harness's visual enhancement plugin: enabling Agents that originally could only chat with text to directly "see" images — after sending an image, the Agent can call 14 visual tools just like regular tools (positioning, cropping, pixel comparison, OCR, vectorization, background removal, HTML screenshot, etc.), while built-in with a registration-free, key-free anonymous visual chain fallback, with the entire pipeline not relying on Python.

Core Capabilities

• Making image turns work like regular text turns: users paste images, the Agent answers by viewing via vision_describe, and can perform continuous multi-step operations (ground → crop → describe → pixel_diff)
• Automatically mirroring existing model groups as "+ Auto Image Recognition" entry points, keeping original model groups unchanged, with hot updates when new models/scope changes
• Built-in OVHcloud anonymous free visual chain fallback (5 Qwen/Mistral models), usable without filling any Key
• Providing pixel-level visual tools: positioning, cropping, pixel-by-pixel comparison (difference rate + red heatmap), color picking, SVG vectorization, solid background removal
• Visual answers cached by attachment content hash; subsequent text turns replace historical images with recorded descriptions, so DeepSeek "remembers" previously sent images without repeated visual calls
• Automatic fault degradation chain: region restrictions/risk control/quota/rate limiting/context overflow/network failures, try each provider in sequence, 429 triggers circuit breaker cooldown

Technical Implementation

• Language: JavaScript (ESM) / CommonJS client build
• Key Dependencies: sharp (image processing), potrace (bitmap vectorization), puppeteer-core + system Chrome (HTML screenshots), undici (HTTP calls), @deepseek-ai/schemastery (config Schema)
• Architecture Pattern: Cordis plugin + bundle patch self-mount, injects tools, llm; entry.js standardizes progressiveTools default values before calling core apply; client goes through dsh.client injection into dsh-client-ui-settings/dsh-client-runtime/dsh-client-connection/dsh-api-remotes
• Entry Files: entry.js → index.js (core 7222 lines), client bundle entry lib/client.js; also exposes dsh-vision-router CLI (lib/doctor-cli.js) for diagnosis/repair

Use Cases

Suitable for users sending images to DeepSeek-style Agents in DSH Web: paste screenshots to let it see UI errors, attach reference images for page replication, paste product images for difference description, paste long chat screenshots for transcription. Users who need UI restoration can verify closed loops (design → HTML → vision_pixel_diff quantify differences → fix → compare again), or users who want to use local Ollama/LM Studio for offline sensitive image recognition can all benefit directly.

Prerequisites & Compatibility

Installation

dsh plugin --profile web add github:ysr666/dsh-vision-router

Configuration Options

FAQ

Q: Do I need additional configuration after installation?

A: No. The plugin comes with bundle patches and enables the built-in OVH anonymous free visual chain by default; after installation, simply switch to the model group with "+ Auto Image Recognition" in the bottom-right corner of the chat page to send images.

Q: Can I use it without an API Key?

A: Yes. The default chain includes 5 OVHcloud anonymous visual models, registration-free and key-free, 2 requests per minute per IP per model. When quota is insufficient, you can add a httpProviders entry with Key in the settings card (e.g., Zhipu's glm-4v-flash).

Q: Why does the chat say "Current model does not support images"?

A: The plugin does not modify original model groups. You need to switch to the group with "+ Auto Image Recognition" in the model selector at the bottom-right of the chat page to send images; sending images with the original pure-text group will be blocked by the host.

Q: Which platforms are supported?

A: Cross-platform. vision_screenshot uses system screenshot capabilities on macOS/Windows; Linux requires ImageMagick's import or scrot; vision_html_screenshot requires Chrome/Chromium/Edge; other tools work without a browser.

Q: What visual tools are available?

A: 13-14 tools mounted by default: vision_describe (image Q&A), vision_ground (pixel positioning), vision_detect (element list), vision_crop (cropping), vision_pixel_diff (pixel comparison + heatmap), vision_colors (color picking), vision_ocr (text transcription), vision_trace (SVG vectorization), vision_extract_foreground (background removal), vision_present (persistent image display), vision_materialize (attachment to disk), vision_html_screenshot (HTML screenshot), vision_long_screenshot_ocr (long screenshot transcription), plus vision_bootstrap structured pre-recognition; privacy-sensitive vision_screenshot is off by default, becomes 14th when enabled.

Q: Can it work purely offline locally?

A: Yes. After enabling localOllama.enabled or localLmStudio.enabled, local backends are prioritized at the front of the HTTP visual chain, automatically degrading on failure; combined with instantDescribe: true, local recognition can be completed before the first model step.

Q: After upgrade, DSH reports "duplicate loader entry id: vision-router"?

A: The profile directory's cordis.patch.yml retains manual insertion blocks from v0.x era, duplicating the plugin's bundle patches. Delete the entire insert: block, or rewrite it to override by id, then restart.

Q: How to uninstall?

A: Execute dsh plugin --profile web remove github:ysr666/dsh-vision-router; wrapped routes, tools, skills, and settings card will be removed together, generated artifact files are preserved.

Learning Curve

Beginner — default config works out of the box for sending images, zero-config start; advanced users can adjust visual backend chain, local backend, cache, proxy, and other parameters via settings card or profile patches.

Known Issues & Limitations

• If the profile directory's package.json is saved as UTF-8 with BOM by some editors, dsh web will report Unexpected token ... is not valid JSON at startup; use the plugin's built-in npx dsh-vision-router repair --profile web to remove BOM
• Residual sharp 0.34.0 in old profile conflicts with host 0.35.3 in same process DLL (issue #42/#75), pixel tools report colourspace: parameter space not set; v1.2.2+ proactively warns when detecting residue
• Oh-DSH Desktop ≤ 0.1.5 has built-in DSH 0.1.0-rc.5, v1.4.1 and earlier causes that runtime to crash on startup (reports configurable provider "deepseek-official" is already declared); need v1.4.2+
• When both dsh-web-ui / dsh-web-ui-all are installed, their dsh-tool-describe-image send hook may rewrite image blocks before this plugin; need to disable "Rewrite image to describe-image reference on send" in "Image Understanding" settings
• pnpm v11 silently blocks versions released less than 24 hours, causing update to report downloaded 0 / added 0; need to explicitly add dsh-vision-router@<version> or run npx dsh-vision-router repair
• vision_html_screenshot depends on system-installed Chrome/Chromium/Edge, reports error directly when not detected without auto-install
• vision_ocr silently falls back to visual model when local engine (tesseract) is missing, OCR speed and quota counted as visual model
• vision_screenshot is off by default; when enabled, macOS/Windows use system screenshot capability; Linux requires ImageMagick import or scrot and must be in a capturable desktop session (Wayland support depends on environment)

dsh-vision-router

Paste an image and it just works — eyes for text-only agents on DeepSeek Harness. Free out of the box, no key, no Python, one command.

DeepSeek keeps thinking; the built-in free vision chain and fourteen deep tools do the seeing. Image turns behave like ordinary tool-calling turns — grounded, measurable, repeatable.

English · 中文

💬 QQ community group: 1105463028

[!WARNING] 📌 Announcement (v1.5.3)

v1.5.3: Fixes the rc.6 update-check routes (#160), guards repetition-loop vision output, rewords misleading copy, and logs every backend vision call.

Contents

• Why this exists
• How it compares
• Design lineage
• Acknowledgements
• Quick start
• Free vision key channels
• Highlights
• How it works
• Tools
• Configuration
• Install and lifecycle
• Troubleshooting

Why this exists

Most DSH vision plugins bridge images to DeepSeek as text descriptions — lossy, one-shot, and blind to pixels. This plugin keeps the original pixels on the vision model's side and DeepSeek on the reasoning side, and makes looking at an image an ordinary tool call:

• One command install. The package ships its own composition patch (dsh.bundle.patch): dsh plugin add wires the row, the admission wrapper and the attachment limits automatically — zero manual file edits. Taking over the official DeepSeek route is an optional setting (stealth mode, off by default).
• Free by default. Vision tools end with a five-model OVHcloud anonymous fallback: no account, no key, 2 requests/minute per IP per model, roughly 10 RPM in theory across independent buckets. User-provided vision models run first.
• No Python. The whole pipeline — downscale, grounding, crop, pixel diff, palette, OCR, SVG trace, cutout, HTML screenshot — runs on sharp / potrace / tesseract / system Chrome.
• Continuous multi-step image work. An image turn is a text turn that calls tools: vision_ground → vision_crop → vision_describe → vision_pixel_diff → fix → screenshot again. The agent keeps iterating until the work is done.
• DeepSeek stays the brain. Text turns are untouched in model, cost and context. The vision model is only the eyes, called on demand; answers are cached by image content.
• Transparent to the user. Uploaded images keep rendering as images in the conversation UI; the rewrite that points the model at the vision tools happens only inside the model call, never in the session log.

How it compares

One-line take: most dsh vision plugins turn images into text descriptions for DeepSeek (description bridge — lossy); this plugin hands the image turn straight to a vision model (routing bridge — pixel-faithful), with a built-in keyless free fallback.

Difference from existing dsh community projects (all excellent, each with its own focus; descriptions reflect their READMEs as of 2026-08):

Design lineage

The deep-vision tool layer and UI-restoration workflow in this project were informed by Anionex/agent-vision-toolkit and its native DSH implementation Anionex/dsh-vision-toolkit. In particular, this project drew on their intent-driven tool selection, progressive tool exposure, pixel-diff verification loop, and parts of the visual-tool decomposition and naming, including long-screenshot OCR, foreground extraction, and HTML screenshot tooling.

All code in dsh-vision-router is independently implemented. On top of those referenced design ideas, this project independently developed its turn-level/tools-first vision routing, DSH admission/wrapper integration, multi-backend provider and failure fallback chains, built-in free vision chain, attachment/image-memory handling, caching, and related runtime resilience mechanisms.

We appreciate Anionex's prior work and the broader DSH community. Clear attribution and independent iteration can coexist; both help keep the DSH ecosystem open, collaborative, and healthy.

Acknowledgements

This project borrows ideas from all of the above — especially the keyless free-endpoint exploration (LLM7.io and OVHcloud anonymous tiers) by dsh-vision-sidecar. Thanks to the authors of dsh-vision-proxy, dsh-vision-provider, modlens, dsh-vision-toolkit, and dsh-tool-vision.

Quick start

1. Install the plugin

For normal npm/npx installs, installation is a single command:

npx @deepseek-ai/dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-vision-router

[!NOTE] Third-party dsh-web-plugin-manager / dshpm v0.4.2+ is also compatible: its quality gate now correctly allows @deepseek-ai/schemastery as a runtime dependency. The official DSH CLI above remains the recommended install path.

If you run DeepSeek Harness from a source checkout with pnpm, use the workspace script instead — dsh is not necessarily on your shell PATH:

cd deepseek-harness
pnpm dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-vision-router

If you already installed the DSH CLI globally and dsh is on PATH, the shorter dsh ... form works too. After installation, start or reload DSH Web as you normally do.

[!NOTE] If you install the plugin into a Web process that was already running long-term, let that DSH Web process reload once so the plugin bundle itself is discovered. After the plugin is loaded, adding/removing models or changing wrapper scope hot-updates without further DSH restarts.

2. Switch to a “+ Auto Vision” model group in chat

Once loaded, the plugin discovers the model groups enabled under Settings → Models and creates same-name auto-vision entries. For example:

opencode-go                 ← original model group, unchanged
opencode-go + Auto Vision   ← choose this when sending images

[!IMPORTANT] Before sending an image, open the model selector in the lower-right corner of the chat composer and choose a group marked “+ Auto Vision”.

Vision Router deliberately does not modify the original model group. If the conversation still uses the original text-only opencode / DeepSeek route, DSH can reject the image with “the current model does not support images” before Vision Router gets a chance to handle it. That is a model-entry selection issue, not a broken vision backend.

The auto-vision group follows the live DSH model catalog. Adding models or changing wrapper scope does not require a restart.

3. Paste or upload the image

After choosing the “+ Auto Vision” group, paste or upload an image normally. By default the complete vision tool schema is stable from session start, so the agent can immediately use vision_describe, vision_ground, vision_crop, and the rest across multiple steps when needed.

The built-in anonymous OVH vision fallback is already configured, so normal image use needs no signup or API key. The lower-right chat picker selects only the brain/conversation model; vision backends do not belong there. Advanced options live under Settings → Plugins → Plugin config → 视觉路由（自动识图）: each vision-backend row may select any callable generative user model already configured under Settings → Models. DSH image-capability metadata is advisory only: undeclared or text-only-labelled models remain selectable and show a warning. At runtime Vision Router always tries the provider's registered DSH adapter first — including WebSocket, RPC and private transports — and falls through on a real failure. The direct compatibility bridge is used only when an http(s) OpenAI Chat Completions endpoint is positively identified. Leaving every user row empty is valid; the OVH chain remains the final fallback. Vision HTTP is an internal transport route, not a model group users should select.

See it in action

Left: an image turn — the user sends a picture, the agent calls vision_describe through the free chain and answers. Right: the finished structured answer.

Free vision key channels

The built-in OVH fallback is anonymous by design, and OVH caps anonymous use at 2 requests/minute per IP per model. If that feels tight, every channel below offers free vision models with much higher quotas — all of them are free to register, and none charges for the free tier. Free policies rotate often; treat this table as an August 2026 snapshot and double-check each provider's console before relying on it.

Any of these channels can join the vision chain as an httpProviders entry (key in the matching environment variable or ~/.dsh/.credentials.yaml), and the chain tries your entries before the anonymous fallback.

[!NOTE] Free-tier policies change without notice — Cerebras retired its free tier in July 2026 (now a one-time $5 credit), SambaNova's free tier is down to 20 requests/day, and Hugging Face's is $0.10/month. Third-party “:free relay” aggregators are deliberately not listed: they rotate quickly, lack SLAs, and some resell quota in ways that violate upstream terms.

Highlights

• Original pixels, real answers. The vision chain reads the image at original resolution (auto-downscaled only to protect latency/quota); the agent's question travels with the image, so answers are about your question, not a generic description.
• Automatic failover with classified errors. Region blocks, ToS filtering, 402 quota, 429 rate limits, context overflow, network failures — the chain walks providers one by one and only reports after all of them failed, with actionable advice. A 429 immediately advances to the next backend and opens a Retry-After-aware cooldown instead of sleeping inside the request.
• Image memory. Vision answers are cached by attachment content hash; later text turns substitute the recorded description (marked as untrusted evidence), so DeepSeek genuinely remembers earlier images without re-spending vision calls.
• A verifiable pixel loop. Reference → vision_html_screenshot → vision_pixel_diff (ratio + red heatmap + worst-region ranking) → fix → repeat until the mismatch converges. UI restoration becomes measurable instead of eyeballed.
• Stable tool schema. All fourteen deep tools are registered from session start by default, avoiding a mid-conversation tool-list expansion that can invalidate long-context KV/prefix caches. progressiveTools: true remains an advanced boot-time opt-in; only then does vision_activate mount the tools on demand. See docs/progressive-tools-cache.md.
• Selective proxy. Only the configured vision provider hosts go through your local proxy; DeepSeek stays direct.

Pixel loop in practice

_{Click the image to open the full-resolution original.}

The agent rebuilt the UI from the reference image, then verified the final result with vision_pixel_diff: 2.54% final diff (32,939 / 1,296,000 differing pixels, threshold 16/channel).

How it works

The vision model is only the eyes; DeepSeek is always the brain. An image turn is never hijacked by a one-shot vision answer — the agent drives the tools itself and can keep operating on the image across as many steps as the task needs.

Tools

Default progressiveTools: false: all fourteen deep tools stay registered from plugin startup, so text and image turns can call them immediately. If you explicitly set progressiveTools: true in the profile/composition cordis.patch.yml, progressive mode is restored: only vision_activate is exposed initially, the full tool set mounts on first use, and the vision-tools skill is registered. This is a boot-time switch; restart DSH after changing it. Built on sharp / potrace / tesseract / system Chrome — no Python:

The diagram covers the eleven image-processing tools. vision_present (durable image delivery) and vision_bootstrap (the optional 1+x structured first pass) bring the default deep-tool set to fourteen. Enabling the privacy-gated vision_screenshot at boot adds an optional fifteenth tool.

Formats are sniffed from magic bytes, so extensionless content-addressed attachment files work everywhere (no .png renaming needed).

Common workflows

vision_ground image="ref.png" target="the send button"
vision_detect image="page.png" target="input fields"
vision_crop   image="ref.png" region="1067,841,1108,881"
vision_present path="rebuilt.png"
vision_describe paths=["ref.png","impl.png"] question="list the differences" json=true
vision_pixel_diff original="ref.png" rebuilt="screenshot.png"
vision_ocr image="screenshot.png"
vision_colors image="ref.png" top=8
vision_trace image="icon.png" steps=4
vision_extract_foreground image="logo.png"
vision_html_screenshot source="page.html" width=1200 height=720
vision_html_screenshot source="page.html" width=1200 height=720 fullPage=true
vision_long_screenshot_ocr image="chat-log.png" chunkHeight=1200 overlap=120

Provider fallback chain

The vision tools try backends in order and surface an error only after all of them fail:

1. User vision models: one per settings row, top to bottom; only models under Settings → Models that explicitly declare image input are shown;
2. Local Ollama (optional, off by default): localOllama.enabled adds keyless, offline recognition through your local Ollama (for example qwen2.5vl);
3. Local LM Studio (optional, off by default): localLmStudio.enabled follows Ollama and requires the real model identifier shown in LM Studio Developer or returned by /v1/models;
4. Advanced custom HTTP vision endpoints: legacy/advanced httpProviders, when present, run after the local backends;
5. Built-in anonymous OVH fallback: always last and never exposed in a model picker. The current quality-first chain is Qwen3.5-397B-A17B → Qwen2.5-VL-72B-Instruct → Qwen3.6-27B → Mistral-Small-3.2-24B-Instruct-2506 → Qwen3.5-9B. OVH anonymous limits are 2 requests/minute per IP per model. The five models have independent buckets, so spreading requests across them is about 10 RPM in theory, subject to OVH's actual rate limiting. No signup or API key is required. Want more headroom? See Free vision key channels — a free OVH access key lifts this same endpoint to 400 requests/minute.

[!IMPORTANT] This “vision chain” is the eyes used by Vision Router: each settings row selects one user vision model, while the lower-right chat picker selects the brain/conversation model. The two are deliberately separate. Text-only DeepSeek/opencode models are filtered out of the vision-backend dropdown, and the internal Vision HTTP transport route is no longer exposed to users.

In the legacy routing: true mode, the whole-turn chain walks only provider + fallbacks — httpProviders (including the free fallback) do not participate there. The default routing: false (tools-first) tries everything.

Failures are classified (region / tos / quota / rate-limit / context / network) and the final error carries advice; a 429 advances immediately to the next backend and applies a capped, Retry-After-aware circuit-breaker cooldown. Oversized uploads are downscaled before the call (default budget 4 MP) to keep tool calls fast.

Stealth mode

Stealth mode is off by default (explicit opt-in since issue #34): with it off, the official deepseek-official route stays untouched and image turns go through the visible "DeepSeek + 自动识图" wrapper entry in the picker.

With stealth on, the plugin takes over the official deepseek-official route: the model picker looks exactly like stock (same DeepSeek group, same model names), but each entry is the auto-vision wrapper that declares image input and delegates text turns to a rebuilt native DeepSeek adapter (same llm-deepseek settings section and credentials). Old sessions keep working through the hidden deepseek-vision alias. The takeover requires the stock row to be absent — disable it in your profile patch layer (~/.dsh/profiles/<profile>/cordis.patch.yml):

- id: llm-deepseek
  name: '@deepseek-ai/dsh-llm-deepseek'
  disabled: true

With the stock row present, the plugin falls back to the visible wrapper entry. Conversely, with stealth off but the stock row still disabled, the plugin performs a keep-alive takeover so the DeepSeek models don't vanish (the settings card explains this); to restore the fully official route, flip the disabled above back to false and restart.

Stealth mode only affects the official DeepSeek route. Custom/third-party routes such as opencode are auto-wrapped into “+ Auto Vision” groups by default.

Auto-vision model groups and manual wrappers

autoWrapProviders is on by default. The plugin discovers the provider/model entries currently enabled under Settings → Models and registers a same-name “+ Auto Vision” model group for them. The original group is never changed: choose the auto-vision group for images, or keep using the original group for plain text. DSH llm/adapters-updated events are synced live, so adding/removing models does not require a restart.

wrappedProviders is an optional manual scope control, not a required setup step. Use it only when:

1. automatic wrapping is off and you want to pick which provider/models receive an auto-vision entry; or
2. automatic wrapping remains on but one provider should expose only selected models in its “+ Auto Vision” group.

The settings card uses provider + model dropdowns; an empty model means every model on that route. Add multiple rows to select multiple models. Changes apply immediately with no restart.

Web settings

The Web profile registers a 视觉路由（自动识图） card under Settings → Plugins → Plugin config. Its top callout spells out the only step most users need: return to chat → lower-right model selector → choose a “+ Auto Vision” model group → send the image. The remaining controls are advanced customization:

• Auto-create “+ Auto Vision” model groups: enabled by default; follows the live model catalog with no restart;
• Manual auto-vision scope (optional): only for disabling auto-wrap or limiting selected models;
• Vision backend chain: the real image-capable models used by vision_describe and friends; the built-in free Qwen is normally enough, and text-only models should not be placed here;
• switches for legacy whole-turn routing, vision tools, image-block rewriting and stealth mode (official DeepSeek route only);
• timeout, wrapper/chain route names, proxy and other advanced parameters;
• every field shows an overridden badge with one-click reset plus discard/save;
• a Test connection button prioritizes an enabled local backend, verifies that its configured model appears in /v1/models, and otherwise probes the first usable vision provider;
• artifact-producing tools render dedicated call cards with result facts and open-file buttons.

PR #8 upgrades the panel with catalog-driven model dropdowns, add/remove fallback rows, and proxy settings.

Configuration

Everything is optional; defaults work out of the box. Edit via the Web card or a profile patch:

Local Ollama vision backend (merged from dsh-vision)

Incremental author: shaoqiuyuavailable (router local-vision increment)

Design credit: the local vision backends (Ollama / LM Studio dual backends, instant recognition, structured output, screenshot identification, same-image memory dedup, failure-fallback placeholder, concurrency anti-snowball, timeout protection) inherit their design from dsh-vision — merged into the HTTP vision chain here, with per-level fallback and dual-protocol support added on top.

An optional keyless local-first vision path for private, free, offline recognition. It plugs into the existing HTTP vision chain as local-ollama; if it fails, any configured cloud backends can still be tried unless you deliberately configure a local-only chain.

1. Install Ollama and pull a vision model

# https://ollama.com — then:
ollama pull qwen2.5vl

2. Enable it — in the settings card's "Local vision" group, or via a profile patch:

- id: vision-router
  config:
    localOllama:
      enabled: true
      baseURL: 'http://127.0.0.1:11434/v1'   # OpenAI-compatible endpoint
      model: 'qwen2.5vl'
      temperature: 0.5                        # optional; low temperature is steadier for recognition
      top_p: 0.8                              # optional; unset = server default
    instantDescribe: true                     # recognize images on the first model step
    localDescribeStyle: 'structured'          # 'plain' | 'structured'

3. What happens

• When enabled, local-ollama heads the HTTP vision chain. For a strict local-only setup, remove cloud vision rows/custom HTTP endpoints and turn off freeFallback.
• LM Studio works the same way — enable localLmStudio in the same "Local vision" group with its OpenAI-compatible endpoint (default http://localhost:1234/v1) and enter the exact model identifier shown in Developer or /v1/models. It sits after local-ollama and before custom/cloud HTTP backends.
• Each local backend can speak OpenAI or Anthropic format via format (default openai). Anthropic mode routes to /v1/messages with anthropic-version and base64 image sources; x-api-key is sent only when a key is configured. LM Studio needs version 0.4.1 or newer for this endpoint.
• If a local backend is down or the call times out, its entry is skipped automatically and the chain falls through to the cloud backends — no call breaks.
• instantDescribe tries enabled local backends in order (Ollama, then LM Studio) before the first model step. Multiple uncached images run concurrently (up to 3); one failed image does not block the others, and attachment-memory hits are reused without another local request.
• vision_screenshot is disabled by default. After the separate Desktop screenshot opt-in, identify=true uses the same Ollama → LM Studio fallback.
• Verify runtime decisions with image turn — instantDescribe=… localBackends=… and results with instant local describe recognized N/M uncached image(s), C cached, F failed attempts in the log.

Requirements

• DeepSeek Harness Web profile. Normal installs can use npx @deepseek-ai/dsh ...; source checkouts use pnpm dsh .... A bare dsh ... command only works when the CLI is already on your shell PATH.
• Node ≥ 22 (host side).
• No API key for the default free chain; a credential reference (apiKeyEnv) only for paid httpProviders.
• Chrome / Chromium / Edge is needed only for vision_html_screenshot; every other tool works without a browser.
• Desktop capture is opt-in. Windows and macOS use OS-provided capture facilities; Linux needs ImageMagick import or scrot and a capturable desktop session (Wayland support depends on the environment).
• Tesseract is optional: vision_ocr falls back to the vision model when the local engine is absent.

Install and lifecycle

Install

Normal npm/npx install — one command:

npx @deepseek-ai/dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-vision-router

From a DeepSeek Harness source checkout:

pnpm dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-vision-router

Optional verification:

npx @deepseek-ai/dsh --profile web --dump-config | grep vision-router
# source checkout: pnpm dsh --profile web --dump-config | grep vision-router

When first adding the plugin to an already long-lived Web profile, let that Web process reload the plugin bundle; the host discovers the browser bundle through dsh.client at startup. After the plugin is loaded, model-catalog and wrapper-scope changes hot-update and do not require a restart.

Oh-DSH Desktop

Oh-DSH Desktop ships its own packaged DSH runtime and its own home layout: the desktop surface runs the desktop profile under ~/.ohdsh and does not load ordinary ~/.dsh profiles. The --profile web commands above therefore install into the wrong environment on that product.

Install into the desktop profile by pointing DSH_HOME at the Oh-DSH home:

DSH_HOME=~/.ohdsh npx @deepseek-ai/dsh plugin --profile desktop add dsh-vision-router

(Windows PowerShell: run $env:DSH_HOME = "$env:USERPROFILE\.ohdsh" first, then the same command.)

[!WARNING] Oh-DSH Desktop ≤ 0.1.5 bundles DSH 0.1.0-rc.5. dsh-vision-router v1.4.1 and earlier crash that runtime at startup (configurable provider "deepseek-official" is already declared, surfacing as DSH runtime exited before readiness). Install v1.4.2+.

If a broken install already keeps the Desktop from starting, open ~/.ohdsh/profiles/desktop/package.json, remove the dsh-vision-router entry from both dependencies and dsh.profile.bundles, save, and restart the Desktop.

Oh-DSH Desktop's built-in plugin marketplace (search → prepare → isolated preview → apply, with a previous snapshot for recovery) also works once the community catalog lists this plugin; do not mix marketplace installs with the direct command above. The bundled @oh-dsh/vision (view_image) coexists with this plugin — the tool names do not collide.

Disable / re-enable

- id: vision-router
  disabled: true

Set it back to false to re-enable. Unloading removes the wrapper routes, tools, skill and settings card; cached artifact files remain.

Upgrade

# normal npm/npx install — install the version you want explicitly; a bare
# `update` is silently held back for releases younger than 24h (pnpm v11)
npx @deepseek-ai/dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-vision-router@<version>

# DeepSeek Harness source checkout
pnpm dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-vision-router@<version>

Settings live in the profile's settings provider and survive upgrades. The settings card's one-click update installs the registry-confirmed version explicitly and verifies the installed manifest afterwards — it never reports success on a package-manager exit code alone.

A fresh release does not take effect (downloaded 0 / added 0): pnpm v11 holds versions younger than 24h back; install the target version explicitly as above (pnpm auto-exempts it), or npx dsh-vision-router repair fixes the stale version-pinned profile exemption so updates take effect immediately.

Upgrading from a pre-bundle-patch install (v0.x): the package now mounts itself through its own bundle patch, so a leftover manual row in ~/.dsh/profiles/<profile>/cordis.patch.yml duplicates it and dsh web fails at startup with duplicate loader entry id: vision-router. Delete the old block:

- insert:            # remove this whole block
    - id: vision-router
      name: dsh-vision-router

To keep custom settings, replace it with a plain by-id override (no insert):

- id: vision-router
  config:
    # your overrides …

After upgrading from v1.1.x, pixel tools fail with colourspace: parameter space not set: a stale sharp 0.34.0 from the v1.1.0 era still sits in the profile and its libvips DLL conflicts with the host's sharp 0.35.3 in the same process (issues #42 / #75). Delete ~/.dsh/profiles/<profile>/node_modules/sharp and ~/.dsh/profiles/<profile>/node_modules/@img and restart, or run pnpm install inside the profile. Since v1.2.2 the plugin detects the stale version at runtime and prints the same guidance itself.

Uninstall

# normal npm/npx install
npx @deepseek-ai/dsh plugin --profile web remove dsh-vision-router

# DeepSeek Harness source checkout
pnpm dsh plugin --profile web remove dsh-vision-router

This removes the dependency and the bundle layer. If you disabled the stock DeepSeek row manually, re-enable it in your profile patch.

Troubleshooting

Using dsh-web-ui / dsh-web-ui-all together

If dsh-web-ui / @linxin666/dsh-web-ui-all is installed alongside Vision Router, its dsh-tool-describe-image send hook can rewrite image uploads into describe-image references before downstream vision plugins receive the original image block.

dsh-web-ui now provides an explicit compatibility switch. Go to Settings → Plugin config → Image understanding and turn off “Rewrite images to describe-image references on send”, or set interceptImageSend: false. Image sends will then pass through unchanged so dsh-vision-router can receive the original image block. The switch is read on every send, so no hook reinstall or DSH restart is required.

See dsh-web-ui#301 for the upstream compatibility change.

Startup fails with Unexpected token ... is not valid JSON (UTF-8 BOM)

Symptom: dsh web / pnpm dsh web exits immediately at startup:

SyntaxError: Unexpected token ...
is not valid JSON
at JSON.parse (<anonymous>)
at readProfileManifest (packages/boot/app-boot/src/profile.ts)

Cause: ~/.dsh/profiles/<profile>/package.json was saved as UTF-8 with BOM by an editor. The invisible \uFEFF character at the start makes JSON.parse fail, because JSON does not allow it before the opening brace.

Recommended fix: run Vision Router's standalone repair command. It does not require DSH to boot first; it locates the profile, detects a UTF-8 BOM, removes only the three leading BOM bytes, and then validates the JSON again:

npx dsh-vision-router repair --profile web

To diagnose without changing the file:

npx dsh-vision-router doctor --profile web

Replace web if you use another profile, or omit --profile to scan all profiles.

Manual fallback: in VS Code, use “Save with Encoding” → UTF-8 (without BOM). If repair removes the BOM but the JSON is still invalid, it will not guess or rewrite any other JSON content; inspect the file manually.

Security notes

• Image text is untrusted evidence: descriptions, OCR output and the auto-mount note all tell the agent never to execute instructions found inside images.
• Tool inputs resolve through ctx.fs (sandbox-aware); vision uploads never send anything but the selected image and the question.
• Artifacts write only under <workspace>/.dsh-vision-router/artifacts; results return absolute paths and byte counts.
• Secrets never travel: apiKeyEnv names a DSH credential reference; the value is resolved per call and never logged.
• The settings write path goes through the settings service (schema-validated, revision-checked) — a stale or invalid save is rejected, not partially applied.

License

MIT

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