dsh-auto-archive

A DeepSeek Harness (dsh) web plugin that archives sessions which are finished and have not been used for three weeks, once a night, without getting in your way.

A community plugin from SolidiFact. Not an official DeepSeek product.

What it archives

A session is archived only when all of these are true:

• it has had no activity for 21 days (dsh's own last-activity time);
• its goal, if it has one, is complete: an active, paused or blocked goal keeps it;
• every to-do item is completed;
• nothing is queued for its next turn;
• it is not open, not running, not pinned, not in a folder you excluded, and not starred in @michengai/dsh-archive-manager (starring is respected when that plugin is installed);
• it is a top-level session (a sub-agent's session follows its parent).

A session whose state cannot be read is kept, and so is one whose goal or to-dos this dsh cannot show (the plugins that record them are not loaded): "cannot tell" never counts as "finished". An empty session (opened, never used) has nothing unfinished, so it is archived once idle.

Why it is safe to leave running

• Archiving deletes nothing. In dsh it hides a session, and it is restored with one click (for example from the archive manager's page).
• Once a night, in a quiet window (03:30 to 05:30 local by default). If any session is running, it skips that check and tries again ten minutes later.
• Each session is re-checked just before it is archived, and dsh is never asked to stop work: dsh itself refuses to archive a session with running activity.
• Starred sessions it cannot read mean no archiving that night, not "no stars".
• It never waits on dsh forever. Each call it makes (the session list, the starred list, each archive) has a time limit, two minutes by default. If one runs over, the pass stops, logs which call stuck, and records it in the ledger; a stuck archive call ends the night rather than queueing more behind it.
• No more than 200 a night, oldest first.
• Everything it does is written down: one JSON line per night in ~/.dsh/auto-archive/ledger.jsonl, naming every archived session with its title and last activity, plus how many were kept and why.

What it found on one install

A dry run on a real install with 769 sessions (dsh 0.1.7-rc.2):

	Sessions
Would archive (finished, idle 21+ days)	105
Kept: used in the last 21 days	442
Kept: sub-agent sessions	186
Kept: already archived	21
Kept: unfinished to-dos	11
Kept: blocked goal	1
Kept: state could not be read	2
Kept: open	1

Install

Tested with dsh 0.1.7-rc.2 and 0.2.1-alpha.1; every change and a weekly run check it still attaches to dsh's latest and alpha releases. It needs dsh's web profile (the web examples below) and, like any dsh plugin install, pnpm on your PATH.

dsh plugin --profile web add @solidifact/dsh-auto-archive

See what it would do first. Before restarting dsh, put this in the profile's own ~/.dsh/profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml (replacing the empty [] if that is all it holds):

- id: auto-archive
  config:
    dryRun: true
    passOnStart: true

Restart dsh web, wait a minute, and read the last line of ~/.dsh/auto-archive/ledger.jsonl. It lists every session it would archive and how many it kept, and why. When the list looks right, remove those lines; from then on it archives each night.

To remove it:

dsh plugin --profile web remove @solidifact/dsh-auto-archive

Without npm: copy index.mjs into the profile folder as auto-archive.mjs and add it to that profile's cordis.patch.yml (drop the config: lines once the dry run looks right):

- insert:
    - id: auto-archive
      name: './auto-archive.mjs'
      config:
        dryRun: true
        passOnStart: true

Settings

Set any of these under the plugin's id in your profile's cordis.patch.yml; dsh picks up the change without a restart.

- id: auto-archive
  config:
    idleDays: 30
    excludeFolders: ['~/work/client-a']

Setting	Default
idleDays	21	days without activity before a finished session is archived
excludeFolders	[]	project folders whose sessions are never archived (a folder inside one counts too)
archiveEmpty	true	archive sessions that were opened and never used
runAt	"03:30"	local time the nightly window opens
windowHours	2	how long the window stays open
maxPerRun	200	most sessions archived in one night (oldest first; the rest wait)
dryRun	false	decide and record, archive nothing
passOnStart	false	one extra pass a minute after dsh starts
stepTimeoutSeconds	120	how long one dsh call may take before the pass gives up and records it
restore	none	"last" or a night as "YYYY-MM-DD": put back what that night archived (below)
ledger	~/.dsh/auto-archive/ledger.jsonl	where each night is recorded

Getting sessions back

• A whole night: set restore: "last" (or the night's date). Within a few seconds every session that night archived is back, and the ledger records it. Each night is restored once, so leaving the setting in place does nothing more. A restored session is never archived again until you have used it; after that the normal rules apply.
• One session: dsh's own Settings → Archived sessions page, or the Archived tab of @michengai/dsh-archive-manager if you use it.

Tests

node --test

License

Copyright 2026 SolidiFact. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0; see LICENSE.