dsh-literature — Literature Research for DeepSeek Harness

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One query across dblp and arXiv. The literature research capability for DeepSeek Harness: search both sources, get one merged record per paper, the most authoritative BibTeX available, and full text when it exists — without the model ever juggling two databases itself.

Install @shlv/dsh-literature into any profile (Web or Headless) and you get three model-facing tools: literature_search, literature_bibtex, and literature_fulltext.

Quick start

dsh plugin --profile headless add @shlv/dsh-literature
dsh plugin --profile web add @shlv/dsh-literature

One command installs the whole family. To run from the dsh source repository (deepseek-harness) instead of the installed npm packages, set DEEPSEEK_API_KEY and mount this repository's literature.patch.yml:

cd <your dsh checkout>   # e.g. deepseek-harness
pnpm dsh --profile headless --patch /path/to/dsh-literature/literature.patch.yml \
  "search for 'Attention is all you need', fetch its BibTeX, then download the full text"

(/path/to/dsh-literature is where you cloned this repository.)

Why this exists

Academic search splits across two databases with complementary coverage: dblp holds formal published records (plus CoRR mirrors of arXiv cs.* preprints), while arXiv holds preprints that dblp syncs with a lag. Asking the model to query both and reconcile the answers wastes tokens and produces inconsistent citations. This seam (the shared service behind both sources) does the reconciliation once: dedupe, authoritative-source preference, and fallback are policy, not prompt engineering.

Highlights

• One merged record per paper. A dblp CoRR mirror, its formal published record, and the arXiv preprint collapse into a single record — deduped by arXiv id (derived from the CoRR key when needed), then publisher DOI, then normalized title.
• Authoritative BibTeX, automatically. Formal dblp entry wins for published papers; a still-unpublished preprint gets the citation-correct arXiv @misc; the dblp CoRR mirror is the last resort. No more citing a mirror artifact as the paper of record.
• Full text when it exists. Acquires the arXiv LaTeX source tarball, then the HTML5 rendering, then the PDF — and for DOI-only or landing-page references, resolves the publisher PDF link through a zero-tool subagent and extracts the body text.
• Stable ids the model can reuse. Every merged record carries a stable plugin-generated id (arxiv:…, dblp:…, doi:…, title:…) the model can pass straight back to literature_bibtex / literature_fulltext.
• Precise title resolution. Title queries pull the full dblp hit list plus a phrase-quoted arXiv search, then rerank by BM25 title similarity — the paper you meant wins even when a newer same-topic paper would sort first.
• Slow downloads never block a turn. literature_fulltext runs as a background ctx.jobs job by default and returns a job id; job_output collects the result. Downloads that measure 25–60 s on publisher sites don't stall the agent loop.
• Hardened transport. One HTTP layer for every request with URL hygiene, no embedded credentials, same-origin redirects with at most one cross-origin hop, byte caps, and cooperative deadlines.
• Polite by default. Both providers serialize through a rate limiter (arXiv at its documented 3 s interval, with exponential backoff on 429/503); one throttled source never sinks a search.

Architecture

The family mirrors the DeepSeek Harness capability-seam pattern — Service Definition / Provider / Consumer — behind one installable bundle:

Package	Role	Registers
@shlv/dsh-literature (bundle)	Install bundle: the one package you dsh plugin add; depends on the four functional packages and ships the patch that mounts them	profile bundle layer
@shlv/dsh-literature-core	Service Definition (ctx.literature): source registry, merge/dedupe/fallback policy, record resolution, full-text strategy, shared HTTP transport, extraction helpers, LiteratureError taxonomy	ctx.literature
@shlv/dsh-literature-dblp	dblp source provider: search API, record XML lookup, per-record BibTeX, CoRR↔arXiv key bridge	registers a source on ctx.literature
@shlv/dsh-literature-arxiv	arXiv source provider: Atom search, exact-id lookup, BibTeX, full-text artifact download	registers a source on ctx.literature
@shlv/dsh-literature-tool	Consumer: the three model-facing tools, their schemas, presentation, and the publisher-PDF-link subagent fallback	ctx.tools

You only ever install the bundle; the other four are its dependencies. The two sources share one seam because they evolve independently: the full-text machinery (tar, pdf.js) must not drag the dblp provider, and a deployment that loads only one provider still gets a working search.

Requirements

• DeepSeek Harness 0.1.0-rc.6 or a compatible later release (the plugin declares @deepseek-ai/dsh-* peers at that release line).
• Node.js ^22.19 or >=24.
• literature_fulltext's background mode uses @deepseek-ai/dsh-jobs-local and @deepseek-ai/dsh-tool-jobs, which the Harness profile base bundle provides by default (the headless and web profiles ship them); if your profile lacks them, add them with dsh plugin add.
• The publisher-PDF fallback needs the subagents service with a provider supporting outputSchema (default spawn). Without it, DOI-only and landing-page inputs report LITERATURE_FULLTEXT_UNAVAILABLE; search, BibTeX, and arXiv full text still work.

Install and lifecycle

dsh plugin --profile headless add @shlv/dsh-literature      # install
dsh plugin --profile headless remove @shlv/dsh-literature   # uninstall

Upgrading. After a new release, dsh plugin add may still install the previous version because pnpm caches registry metadata. Install with an explicit version, or clear the metadata cache first:

dsh plugin --profile headless add @shlv/dsh-literature@0.1.1
# or: pnpm cache clean

Tools

Tool	What it does
literature_search	Query dblp and arXiv, merge/dedupe, return records with stable ids, source-native titles, venues, DOIs, arXiv ids, and abstracts.
literature_bibtex	Resolve a title, arXiv id, dblp key, or DOI to one BibTeX entry — formal dblp → arXiv @misc → dblp CoRR mirror — with a provenance note when the year is version-dependent.
literature_fulltext	Acquire full text: the arXiv source tarball → HTML → PDF, then — for papers without an arXiv preprint — the publisher PDF link via a subagent; an explicit PDF or landing-page URL is accepted directly. Persists the extracted files into the session workspace under literature/<id>/. Background by default; returns the bounded summary plus file paths.

Each tool takes one free-form query string; the seam recognizes titles, arXiv ids, dblp keys, DOIs, and URLs. literature_bibtex resolves titles, arXiv ids, dblp keys, and DOIs (a URL input is rejected); literature_search and literature_fulltext additionally accept URLs.

Service API (ctx.literature)

Member	Semantics
registerSource(source)	Register a source (dblp or arxiv); rejects duplicates; returns a disposer.
search(request, signal?)	Run every selected available source in parallel and merge the normalized hits.
resolveRecord(input, signal?)	Resolve a title, arXiv id, dblp key, CoRR key, or DOI into one merged record; exact identifiers win over fuzzy title matches.
bibtex(input, signal?)	Select the most authoritative BibTeX entry (formal dblp → arXiv → CoRR mirror).
fulltext(input, signal?)	Acquire full text in priority order (arXiv source → HTML → PDF → explicit PDF URL). A record without an arXiv preprint has no seam-level artifact and reports LITERATURE_FULLTEXT_UNAVAILABLE; the tool then resolves the publisher PDF link via landingPage and a subagent.
landingPage(input, signal?)	Fetch a publisher landing page by DOI or URL and return bounded, minified HTML for PDF-link analysis.

Merge and fallback policy

• Dedupe keys a paper by arXiv id (derived from the dblp CoRR key journals/corr/abs-YYMM-NNNNN when present), then publisher DOI, then normalized title. A differing DOI is not decisive: a CoRR mirror carries the arXiv DataCite DOI (10.48550/…) while its formal record carries the publisher DOI.
• Merge prefers the formal dblp record's venue, year, DOI, and BibTeX, and retains the arXiv id from the CoRR mirror or the arXiv hit.
• BibTeX prefers the formal dblp record; a still-unpublished preprint gets the arXiv @misc (citation-correct, unlike dblp's CoRR @article-in-CoRR artifact), with the dblp CoRR mirror as the last resort.
• Full text prefers the arXiv LaTeX source tarball, then the arXiv HTML5, then the arXiv PDF, then an explicit PDF URL. A failed artifact kind falls through to the next one (a PDF-only submission whose /e-print serves a PDF still resolves through /pdf). A record without an arXiv id has no seam-level artifact; the tool resolves the publisher PDF link through a subagent.

Configuration

Each package accepts validated config through a row in your profile's cordis.yml (the dsh plugin configuration file); every value is defaulted and deployment-tunable.

Package	Key options (defaults)
literature-core	enabledSources (all registered), searchMaxResults (10), timeoutMs (60 000), downloadMaxBytes (100 MB), extractMaxChars (200 000), summaryMaxChars (4000), landingPageMaxChars (20 000), maxRedirects (5), maxUrlLength (2048), userAgent
literature-dblp	baseUrl (https://dblp.org), timeoutMs (30 000), maxResponseBytes (5 MB), rateLimitMs (1000), userAgent
literature-arxiv	apiBase (https://export.arxiv.org), wwwBase (https://arxiv.org), timeoutMs (30 000), maxResponseBytes (100 MB), rateLimitMs (3000), rateLimitBackoffBaseMs (3000), rateLimitBackoffMaxRetries (5)
literature-tool	subagentProvider (spawn)

Model experience

The tools keep model context lean: literature_search returns one line per paper with a truncation footer, literature_bibtex one fenced block plus an optional note, and literature_fulltext a bounded summary with the extracted bodies written to disk rather than echoed into the prompt. The seam contributes no prompt or schema itself; the consumer owns every model-visible string.

Troubleshooting

• The plugin fails to load after install ("Cannot find module … lib/error.js"): the installed package is missing its runtime modules. Reinstall at the latest version (dsh plugin --profile headless add @shlv/dsh-literature@<version>); versions whose tarball ships only lib/index.js are broken.
• dsh plugin add installs an old version: pnpm's registry metadata cache. Use an explicit version or pnpm cache clean (see Install and lifecycle).
• A DOI-only paper reports LITERATURE_FULLTEXT_UNAVAILABLE: the subagents service or the configured provider is absent, or the publisher blocks non-browser clients (dl.acm.org returns 403). Pass the explicit PDF URL in that case.
• arXiv full text for an old paper: the HTML5 rendering exists only for a subset of papers; the seam falls back to the PDF, which arXiv itself serves — no publisher involved. Papers without an arXiv preprint (dblp-only records) instead resolve the publisher PDF link, which bot walls can block.

Development and verification

pnpm install && pnpm run build && pnpm run typecheck && pnpm run test

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the repository layout, dependency strategy, release procedure, and the full verification checklist.

Known limitations

• Publisher bot walls: dl.acm.org returns 403 to non-browser clients, so ACM-DL DOIs fail at the landing-page fetch.
• The arXiv HTML5 rendering exists only for a subset of papers; the provider returns null for the other kinds so the seam falls back.
• The CoRR bridge covers only arXiv cs.* categories; non-CS papers rely on DOI or title matching.
• LaTeX → prose is lossy: the source-tarball summary strips commands and comments, not a rendered document.
• SSRF / private-network blocking is deferred, matching the web fetch provider: http(s) only, no embedded credentials, same-origin redirects with at most one cross-origin hop.

License

MIT