Add Decky Proton Pulse to Plugin Store

[mdeguzis]

Add Decky Proton Pulse to Plugin Store

Decky Proton Pulse brings ProtonDB-style compatibility help into a Decky workflow on Steam Deck. It lets users browse ranked community reports, compare them against their own system, inspect report details, manage cache and logs, and apply launch options more quickly.

Screenshots:

• https://github.com/mdeguzis/decky-proton-pulse/wiki/UI-Screenshot-Gallery

Plugin Details

• Repo: https://github.com/mdeguzis/decky-proton-pulse
• Version: 0.2.0
• Submitted commit: 94ac66aa66196c0bb4bfd5cf3fbdd8d52cea5e7e
• Submitted tag: v0.2.0-rc1
• License: BSD-3-Clause

What It Does

• Browse ProtonDB-derived report data inside Decky
• Rank reports using the current system as part of the scoring context
• Inspect report details, hardware comparison, notes, and compatibility context
• Apply launch options from selected reports
• Review logs, compatibility tools, settings, and cache state from the same plugin

Task Checklist

Developer

• I am the original author or an authorized maintainer of this plugin.
• I have abided by the licenses of the libraries I am utilizing, including attaching license notices where appropriate.

Plugin

• I have verified that my plugin works properly on the Stable and Beta update channels of SteamOS.
• I have verified my plugin is unique or provides more/alternative functionality to a plugin already on the store.

Backend

• No: I am using a custom backend other than Python.
• No: I am using a tool or software from a 3rd party FOSS project that does not have it's dependencies statically linked.
• No: I am using a custom binary that has all of it's dependencies statically linked.

Community

• I have tested and left feedback on two other pull requests for new or updating plugins.
• I have commented links to my testing report in this PR.

Testing

• Tested on a real Steam Deck

• Verified main flows including:

  • report browsing and ranking
  • launch option apply flow
  • logs view and viewer modal
  • compatibility tools view
  • settings and cache management areas

• Tested by a third party on SteamOS Stable or Beta update channel.

Notes

• Plugin repository is public and reviewable
• Repository includes a LICENSE file
• No private repositories, black-box binaries, or deliberately obfuscated code are used

[github-actions]

Issues Found

• Neither testing box is present in your description. Please include one of them per the Markdown comment above the testing section.

Next Steps

1. If we found any issues above, please edit your pull request description to resolve them and leave a comment saying you've done so.
2. For the quickest review, please see the Community section of the pull request template for how you can help other developers.
3. Once your description is correct, a maintainer will review your pull request as soon as possible.

Thank you for your contribution! If you need any help, please reach out on our Discord server. ❤️

[mdeguzis]

Updated the PR description to include the required task checklist and testing section.

[Alia5]

Seems to work at a glance for me.

Do note that I do not and never will run SteamOS on my Deck.

Not to be nit-picky, but rather as proof of review:
Found a minor UI issue, though.

[mdeguzis]

Seems to work at a glance for me.

Do note that I do not and never will run SteamOS on my Deck.

Not to be nit-picky, but rather as proof of review: Found a minor UI issue, though. .....

Ty for the screenshot, I think I have that patched above the current commit and will check this. Since SteamOS is the native supported OS, what do you run instead? I assume you are referring to a derivative or SteamOS-Like, such as Bazzite or ChimeraOS?

Edit: yes it's fixed, I will ensure my commit ref is updated.

Screenshot:

[Alia5]

I assume you are referring to a derivative or SteamOS-Like, such as Bazzite or ChimeraOS?

Nah! Get outta here with that preconfigured and "immutable" crap (crap for myself, personally)!
I run vanilla Arch (btw)
I do use the Kernel from Valves Arch package mirror and Gamescope.

[EMERALD0874]

Hi, can you please post some screenshots of how users can add/edit launch options for their game? This looks similar to both decky-proton-launch (PR) and Decky Launch Options (on the plugin store). Trying to figure out which plugins are significantly different from others v. similar enough that we'd prefer them to be a PR.

So far this is looking good though. We'll review the code sometime soon. Thanks!

[mdeguzis]

Hi, can you please post some screenshots of how users can add/edit launch options for their game? This looks similar to both decky-proton-launch (PR) and Decky Launch Options (on the plugin store). Trying to figure out which plugins are significantly different from others v. similar enough that we'd prefer them to be a PR.

So far this is looking good though. We'll review the code sometime soon. Thanks!

Have you reviewed https://github.com/mdeguzis/decky-proton-pulse/wiki/UI-Screenshot-Gallery? This is much more than copying and pasting env vars into launch options. It's very well thought out.

Other options mentioned and how they compare:

Area	Proton Pulse	decky-launch-options	decky-proton-launch
Main goal	ProtonDB-driven launch option workflow on Steam Deck	Generic launch option manager	Proton-focused launch variable manager
Core approach	Pulls ProtonDB reports, scores them against your hardware, then lets you apply report-derived launch options	Lets you define reusable on/off launch option recipes and toggle them per game or globally	Provides predefined Proton variables and per-game profiles
ProtonDB integration	Yes, deep integration	No	No
Hardware-aware report ranking	Yes	No	No
Full report browsing in-plugin	Yes	No	No
Compare report hardware to your system	Yes	No	No
Apply launch options from community reports	Yes	No	No
Saved per-game configurations	Yes	Yes	Yes
Generic custom launch-option composition	Partial, centered around report/config flows	Strongest of the three	Strong, but focused on predefined Proton variables
Global launch-option toggles across all games	No primary focus	Yes	Not a primary feature
Predefined Proton variables	Some through config/profile flows, but not the main product shape	User-defined recipes instead	Yes, this is a major feature
Proton / Proton-GE install management	Yes	No	Limited compared to Proton Pulse
Running game detection / jump-in flow	Context-menu and game-specific flow	Per-game toggle flow from game page	Yes, explicitly advertised
Logs / diagnostics	Yes, built-in logs and cache/perf diagnostics	Not a headline feature	Not a headline feature
Cache / data pipeline / CDN mirror	Yes, via proton-pulse-data mirror, live detailed fallback, coverage reporting	No	No
Voting / ProtonDB contribution helpers	Yes	No	No
Translation coverage tracking	Yes, with audited coverage and screenshot review flow	Not highlighted	Multi-language support advertised
Best fit	“Show me the best ProtonDB reports for this game and help me act on them”	“Let me build and toggle my own launch option system”	“Give me a clean Proton-variable manager with predefined options”

[mdeguzis]

@EMERALD0874 , I also wrote a submission story of how things basically work, why they matter and do what they do, with screenshots here: https://github.com/mdeguzis/decky-proton-pulse/wiki/Decky-Plugin-Loader-Submission.

The vision and design is simple: This isn't some simple tool to apply proton options or open up some web page to view handy information. It's a complete ecosystem, driven by a passion for Linux gaming, Proton (OG user of SteamOS since 2013, Linux system since 2004), with a heap of careful planning, and full unit, integ, and smoke testing. I didn't just make it to go on this store (that's just to make it easier), I made it for me, and for others like me.

Also, why is there a '[not-plugin]' label on this submission? When you say the word. I'll do a last sync to make sure all concerns/files are up to date for this PR and tag as 1.0.0.

Cheers.

[EMERALD0874]

• Please remove the py_modules, backend, and default folders if not using them.
• Please confirm your plugin needs root access or remove _root from your plugin.json.

[mdeguzis]

• Please remove the py_modules, backend, and default folders if not using them. - done
  , removed

• Please confirm your plugin needs root access or remove _root from your plugin.json. - some, no root needed

[mdeguzis]

@EMERALD0874 anything else you need from me?

[EMERALD0874]

Please let us know when you are done updating your plugin. Please also stop force-pushing if possible, as it makes viewing commit history more difficult for us and can require us to re-review your entire plugin rather than just the changes.

[mdeguzis]

I'm sorry about that @EMERALD0874 ... Was just trying to keep it clean for a one commit merge. I'll do a 1.0.0 today after I do some finally checks. Apologies 🙇‍♂️

[mdeguzis]

@EMERALD0874 release 1.0.0 has been pushed to mdeguzis:add/decky-proton-pulse. Code has been audited and reviewed. See code coverage / tests.

[allmazz]

Plugin Testing Report

Installed Plugins

• Desktop Apps - 0.1.0
• Volume Mixer 0.1.0
• Portal - 1.0.0
• SteamGridDB - 1.7.1
• Proton Pulse - 1.0.0

Specifications

• Fedora 43 (Linux 6.19.14-200.fc43.x86_64)
• Gamescope 3.16.22
• Steam 1777411435 (Stable)
• Decky v3.2.3-dev2 (allmazz/decky-loader:fix/rootless_setuid)

Issues

Has the following major blocking issue(s): not found
Has the following minor non-blocking issue(s): not found

Summary

Browsed and installed different profiles for a game, manually modified one and checked logs. Anything looks fine, no issues found.

[mdeguzis]

Showing a commit conflict. Rebasing my branch,.

[mdeguzis]

Any update?

[tomdewilde1983]

Hi all,

First of all: I’m only a heavy Decky user, not a developer. I even had to create a GitHub account just to comment here — probably a one-time thing for me.

When I saw this plugin, I was honestly a bit shocked that it even reached the testing phase, which is why I felt the need to respond.

It’s very clear that this plugin takes the work and ideas of several existing plugins/software projects and combines them into yet another “plugin.” It will likely also create conflicts with existing plugins, which may end up frustrating both users and maintainers of those plugins.

It is essentially a combination of existing ideas,existing hard work, wrapped into a new tool, while also adding features such as data sharing with external systems. [login on external system]

This plugin takes functionality from SteamGridDB, Wine Cellar, ProtonDB Badges, Decky Proton Launch, and others, and combines them together. But Decky is meant to be a plugin ecosystem. One single tool that absorbs the functionality of many existing plugins stops feeling like a plugin and starts becoming an all-in-one replacement for the ecosystem itself.

Furthermore, this appears to have been created using Codex, which goes directly against the Decky plugin policies. The proof can be found in the “superpowers plans” and phase1-status.md, where it is clearly mentioned that Codex agents are performing tasks, along with Git hooks that remove Co-Authored-By entries, etc.

This creates a risk for the Decky ecosystem, because these kinds of plugins are the most likely to cause the well-known Decky crashes and stability issues, especially when the “developers” do not fully understand what they are doing. I’m not saying that will necessarily be the case with this plugin, of course, but it significantly increases the risk.

To be clear: I don’t inherently care that AI is being used. AI can absolutely help developers who genuinely contribute something new to the community. However, in this case, it really feels like the ideas and hard work of other Decky plugin developers are simply being reused and repackaged (sorry for being blunt about it). Those developers are most likely spending a huge amount of time building, maintaining, and supporting their own original plugins and ideas.

I quote the Decky plugin guidelines:

"AI", LLMs and so on
No. We do not accept any plugin that uses any LLM based code as these models do not comply with the GPL license (of which we are one of many many users) and thus cannot in good conscience accept plugins which have scraped or actively scrape the work of human beings without proper credit, permission and or compensation. This will not be a debate. Any LLM focused plugins will be rejected outright and there will be no appeals.

Nothing personal against the developer, of course — this is only my opinion.

[mdeguzis]

@EMERALD0874 You and your team can pass whatever judgement you like, it's your project. I only hope you may see the passion I poured into how this works. Take care.

[mdeguzis]

@tomdewilde1983 , thank you for taking the time to comment.

---

First of all: I’m only a heavy Decky user, not a developer.

You know what Co-Authored-By git trailers are and about git hooks, but you're not a dev? Knowledge about the Decky plugin guidelines verbatim, including the GPL licensing rationale, andd the plugin ecosystem doesn't seem to line up here. A one time account for just a comment feels off as well, akin to being anonymous. The level of repo-diving done here and ecosystem knowledge is not something a casual user would do or be aware of.

shocked that it even reached the testing phase

Shocked how? It's not hard (even sans-A.I. tools to help, which let's be clear, they are tools, like a "project manager" using any A.I. tooling will drown in bugs, terrible inefficient code that goes nowhere, and endless efforts of maintainability). Every step of careful integ/smoke testing here has had unit/integ tests added to solidify and strengthen maintanability. Newline code coverage, overall never below 90%.

It’s very clear that this plugin takes the work and ideas of several existing plugins/software projects and combines them into yet another “plugin.” It will likely also create conflicts with existing plugins, which may end up frustrating both users and maintainers of those plugins.

Coud you explain this? Which work? The only thing that this borrows heavily from (and gives credit for in the readme if you read it) is Wine Cellar, so that automatic mangement of Proton versions (and those versions only*, not other types) is nicely handled int the plugin for the user. This could even be removed. Also, if you mean ProtonDB badges, that was a fun plugin and all, but it was droped a while back, picked up, and all it really does is add a button that takes you to a webpage you must use the touch sytem to navigate. Anything else?

Do we need to get into the amount of dead plugins in the marketplace as well?

It is essentially a combination of existing ideas

Like managing ProtonDB launches natively in a cohesive single interace? What exactly is wrong about that? It has a single vision: a unified native interface to manage, apply, and submit (native form interface) configs that can be also use with a comanion UI, picking up slack from ProtonDB: a closed source system with no real development activity as of late, a developer so hidden away, we only hear form proxies on Disocrd. Works for now I guess.

But Decky is meant to be a plugin ecosystem. One single tool that absorbs the functionality of many existing plugins....

• Bluetooth vs. BlueDuino
• Fantastic vs. SteamOS Fan Control (Built-in Overlap)
• VibrantDeck vs. Native Display Colors (Built-in Overlap)
• PowerTools vs. Native Performance Menu (Partial Overlap)

Despite any of this, would you like to bounce around 5 plugins if one achieved the single purpose of your focused task? The only purpose of this plugin is to manage Proton configs in a very thoughtful and user-friendly manner.

starts becoming an all-in-one replacement for the ecosystem itself.

What? Curious how you equate a plugin to maintain and manage Proton configs with what amounts to a hostile takeover anti-trust doomsday scenario. The scope of this plus is very clearly fine

Furthermore, this appears to have been created using Codex, which goes directly against the Decky plugin policies. The proof can be found in the “superpowers plans” and phase1-status.md, where it is clearly mentioned that Codex agents are performing tasks, along with Git hooks that remove Co-Authored-By entries, etc.

I suggest you review a few of the plugin submissions in the last several months/this year. I definitely started with a lot of help early on, and for complex tasks. Sorry that disturbs you. You could give a car to 2 year old, and it will quickly go off the rails. Beyond the philospohical debate of the model's training data sources, I do kind of love this idea that use of tools to help create something lacks any soul. Soul that drives design, purpose, feedback, opinions (much like yours). I guess in these cases, you'd want a track record other things the person has done (much like a CV resume).

It's not like I have a multi-decade GitHub profile and online prescence. Oh wait.
Yes, I am no wiz kid, but also a passionate user, engineer, and Linux nerd who loves to create.

This creates a risk for the Decky ecosystem, because these kinds of plugins are the most likely to cause the well-known Decky crashes and stability issues,

How exactly do you know that? That is larely driven by maintainer's ability to jump in and fix things promptly (or ignore them in the case of dead plugins). It's a community effort, not an Apple ecosystem. You're writing off someone and something before it even gets off the ground, assuming they will just "ship it" and let it go. You know nothing about me (again, maybe read my GitHub history to start).

To be clear: I don’t inherently care that AI is being used.

That is not the vibe I or many others would get from this post.

I quote the Decky plugin guidelines:

"AI", LLMs and so on
No. We do not accept any plugin that uses any LLM based code as these models do not comply with the GPL license (of which we are one of many many users) and thus cannot in good conscience accept plugins which have scraped or actively scrape the work of human beings without proper credit, permission and or compensation. This will not be a debate. Any LLM focused plugins will be rejected outright and there will be no appeals.

Yet plugins like this are merged: #1018 (reference comment). 2 prior attempts that were just closed for various reasons. There's a weird gray area here.

Merged:

• Update: decky-download-all to v1.1.0 #1026: decky-download-all v1.1.0 (bentemple): used Claude initially, small change
• Add Deck Shelves to Plugin Store #1018: Deck Shelves (santojon): GitHub Copilot for i18n, docs, scripts; ChatGPT for branding image; "all functional
  code written by me"

Not merged (rejected):

• Add GeminiAI - Chat with Gemini directly from the Quick Access Menu #1040: GeminiAI (mark-lacdao): AI-generated
• Add UA Voice CC Bridge plugin #1042: UA Voice CC Bridge (Fok86): "I am not a programmer," AI was primary tool
• Add Prysm to Plugin Store #1024: Prysm (alexevladgabriel): "Claude was used as an AI pair programmer throughout"

Still open:

• Add ha-deck plugin #1014: ha-deck (Marker284): Claude for English localization/docs only, "95% written by me"
• Add Decky Proton Pulse to Plugin Store #1020: Decky Proton Pulse (mdeguzis): alleged by throwaway account, not self-admitted

Nothing personal against the developer, of course — this is only my opinion.

The comment makes good use of hedging language ("nothing personal," "not saying that will necessarily be the case"). It tries to conveny being neutral while making pointed accusations. It does feel slightly personal, as the only thing you know about me is* this plugin, not the Linux nerd since 2004, professional software/systems engineer making this as a hobby project and passion I poured into this. To be honest, It's fine if they close this, I will just keep growing it organically and use it myself. To create a github account just to write a wall of text like you did signals your passion and personal stake in this. I get the eureka moments from tinkering and fixing things, I've been doing that over a decade, further outside GitHub.

Have a great day.

[AAGaming00]

Locked for discussion internally.

[EMERALD0874]

Going to be as thorough as I can about the reasons we're closing this. The TL;DR is the use of AI, licensing issues, and broadness concerns.

When making this decision, we consulted your codebase, your comments in this PR, your plugin screenshots, messages you sent in our Discord server, and the gist you sent outlining your answer to some of our and others' concerns. We did not consider tomdewilde1983's or anyone else's comments, given that the only concern we've seen has been from alt and new accounts.

AI-generated code

In your gist, you explicitly mentioned that you used AI to do frontend styling, translation files, test scaffolding, and other work. However, some parts of your plugin code appear suspicious to members of our team who are more familiar with Python. It also seems like you may have AI-generated your original PR description ahead of time without reviewing our template. While we'd normally ask about this and review your commit history, you appear to have wiped almost all of it sometime before April 27. This prevents us from determining what could have been AI-generated or not at this point, and we aren't very comfortable hosting projects without a transparent Git history. Especially when it once existed and was removed.

Licensing issues

You need to fix these regardless of whether or not you host your plugin on the store, as these are copyright issues with your code. There are two issues with how your plugin is licensed:

1. Your plugin is currently licensed under BSD-3, which violates the GPLv3 enforced in decky-steamgriddb and protondb-decky. BSD-3 and MIT are pretty permissive licenses, so all you need to do is include a copy of the licenses from our plugin template, decky-proton-launch, and decky-wine-cellar beneath your own. However, GPLv3 requires all derivatives to also use the GPLv3 license. Since you are using code from two GPLv3 plugins, you must license your code under GPLv3.
2. Our concerns with AI-generated code also apply to your plugin's ability to license itself. According to US copyright law, AI-generated works are only eligible for copyright by an author if the author made significant modifications to the code. Given your descriptions of AI having a significant impact on front-end styling, testing, and other parts of your plugin, we're a bit concerned about whether or not you're able to comply with the GPLv3 license in the first place.

Broadness of functionality

Your plugin appears to create an alternative to ProtonDB while using its data to drive users towards your platform. You also include functionality that tries to build on ProtonDB but may confuse users, like including a percentage text match to current system specs. We still don't believe this provides significantly more functionality compared to leveraging ProtonDB Badges with either manually changing launch options or using a launch option configuration plugin. To us, this could be a PR to one of those plugins by allowing the viewing and importing of configurations from ProtonDB.

Note

tomdewilde1983 commented on how your plugin "takes functionality from SteamGridDB, Wine Cellar, ProtonDB Badges, Decky Proton Launch, and others, and combines them together". Our understanding is that you only use small amounts of code from some of these plugins (e.g., injecting a menu item into a context menu using SteamGridDB code) and that comment was not used in our analysis.

Regarding resubmission

If, in the future, we end up adopting a policy that is more lenient towards AI-generated code, we may be willing to revisit this PR. However, we do not have plans to do so at this time and will be closing the PR. This PR will stay locked since the conversation appears to have gotten a bit personal and we don't believe there is further discussion to be had, though you are welcome to reach out in #plugin-dev on our Discord server if you have any concerns.