ds-mode

Answers in plain English. With pretty pictures.

DS Mode /dɛs məʊd/ n.  from German Dumm Sprecht: to speak simply.

Big-brain reply on top. Plain-English nudge at the bottom.
A visual one-pager when things get long.

For Claude Code · Cursor · Codex · Copilot

Landing page → · Install · What You Get

The top is the normal AI answer. The yellow block at the bottom is what DS Mode adds.

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DS Mode is a system-prompt overlay for AI coding agents. Install it, pick lite or full, and it just works. It does two things:

1. Adds a plain-English TL;DR to the bottom of every long or technical reply. Three bullets, twelve words each, no jargon.
2. Auto-generates a one-page visual HTML in your browser when the reply is a decent length (full mode only — or any time you explicitly invoke /ds-mode <question>). Illustration-first — hero diagram + captioned tiles, not boxes of text.

Built for product managers, founders, and anyone who'd rather skim a picture than parse a wall of jargon.

For people who skim. Built by one of them.

Modes

Mode	Behavior
lite	TLDR block only. No HTML one-pager unless you explicitly invoke /ds-mode <prompt>. Best for terminal-heavy workflows where browser pop-ups are noise.
full	TLDR + auto HTML one-pager when the reply is a decent length (≥ ~300 words, multi-part concept, 2+ headings, code + narrative, A/B decision). Default.
off	Disabled this session. Hooks emit nothing.

The active mode persists in $CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR/.ds-mode-active. Switch with /ds-mode lite or /ds-mode full.

Theme

The visual one-pager adapts to your OS dark-mode preference by default. You can pin it explicitly:

/ds-mode dark      # force dark palette on every one-pager
/ds-mode light     # force light palette
/ds-mode auto      # follow OS preference (default)

Theme persists in $CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR/.ds-mode-theme.

Mobile mode (private GitHub publish)

Off by default. When enabled, every visual one-pager auto-publishes to a private GitHub repo owned by you, and the reply includes a tappable URL. On your phone, log into GitHub once (Safari or the GitHub mobile app) and the image renders inline — no one else can see it.

Setup (one-time):

/ds-mode mobile setup

The wizard verifies your gh CLI auth, creates <your-github-user>/ds-mode-mobile as a private repo, clones it locally, and writes the config. After that, every stamped one-pager publishes in the background (~1–3s). The URL pattern is github.com/<you>/ds-mode-mobile/blob/main/<file>.png — requires your GitHub session to view, so it's effectively owner-only.

Toggle:

/ds-mode mobile on        # re-enable after off (no re-setup)
/ds-mode mobile off       # pause publishing (config preserved)
/ds-mode mobile status    # show current state

Requires gh CLI installed (brew install gh) and gh auth login completed. Free GitHub accounts can create private repos. See INSTALL.md for the full prereq list.

Update detection

DS Mode pings GitHub once a day in the background to check for newer plugin releases. When one's available you see two ambient signals — never in the TLDR:

• The statusline chip becomes DS:full ↑ (the up-arrow means "update available").
• The SessionStart context shows one line: DS Mode vX.Y.Z is available — run claude plugin update ds-mode@ds-mode and restart Claude Code to pick it up.

Take the update with:

claude plugin update ds-mode@ds-mode

Network failures are silent — a missed check just means you find out one session later.

Install

Pure Claude Code commands (recommended):

claude plugin marketplace add nathan-hekman/ds-mode
claude plugin install ds-mode@ds-mode