hello-dsh

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DSH introduces itself as "Everything is a Plugin."

That is not marketing. Open Settings → Plugins → Plugin list and look at the count:

133 of them. llm (the model adapter), session (conversation history), webserver (the page you are looking at), ui-sidebar (the sidebar on the left), and agent-loop — the agent loop itself is a plugin.

This repo walks you from "open a terminal" to building your own plugin and watching its lifecycle.

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Start here

→ Full tutorial: Hello DSH

🌏 The tutorial is currently written in Chinese. An English version is in progress. The code, commands, and screenshots are language-neutral, so the walkthrough is still followable — and the skills in examples/skills/ work regardless of what language you read.

⚠️ Launch the web UI with --patch, or skills silently do nothing. See the gotcha below.

It assumes you have nothing: no Node.js, no command-line experience. Every section ends with a checkpoint — you don't move on until you see the expected result.

Steps	What	Time
1–2	Open a terminal, install Node.js	7 min
3–5	Launch DSH, configure the API key, pick a workspace	10 min
6	See all 133 plugins for yourself	3 min
7–8	Build your first plugin, watch its lifecycle	10 min
9–10	What's next, theory (optional)	13 min

Steps 1–8 take about 30 minutes and leave you with a working setup.

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Two routes to extend DSH

Route	What you write	Effort	Good for
Markdown (skill)	One text file	5 minutes	Changing how the model judges, formats, and works
TypeScript (code plugin)	A code module	30+ minutes	New tools, external services, UI changes

Rule of thumb: if you can explain it in plain language, take the Markdown route.

The tutorial walks through both.

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Ready-made examples

Once you're through the tutorial, examples/skills/ has 22 Chinese-language skills ready to use.

Let an AI install them (easiest)

Hand this link to Codex, Claude Code, or DSH itself:

https://github.com/pingfanfan/hello-dsh/blob/main/INSTALL-FOR-AGENTS.md
install this

It checks Node, DSH, and the API key first, then copies files.

Or run one command

git clone https://github.com/pingfanfan/hello-dsh.git
cd hello-dsh && ./install.sh

Preview first: ./install.sh --dry-run Remove: ./install.sh --uninstall

The skills

Skill	Use it when
hello-dsh	Start here: verify the plugin system, lifecycle, theory
dsh-onboarding	First run of DSH, or stuck on startup, workspace, permissions
dsh-skill-dev	Full rules for writing skills (Markdown route)
dsh-first-plugin	Building your first code plugin (tested walkthrough)
dsh-plugin-dev	Full rules for writing plugins (TypeScript route)
dsh-troubleshoot	Won't start, config not applying, UNKNOWN_TOOL, missing skills
plan-before-code	A task spanning several files, with unknowns
code-review-cn	Reviewing a change, PR, or diff
debug-systematically	A bug, a failing test, "it worked yesterday"
explain-codebase	Getting oriented in an unfamiliar project
refactor-safely	Refactoring, splitting functions, removing duplication
test-first	Writing tests, implementing a feature, fixing a bug
api-design	Designing an interface, adding a public method
error-handling	Designing error handling, throw vs return
perf-optimize	Optimizing performance, finding what's slow
security-review-cn	Security review, attack surface, credential handling
commit-message	Writing commit messages, splitting changes
pr-description	Writing a PR description, preparing review
write-tech-cn	Writing Chinese docs, READMEs, technical posts
write-docs-cn	Writing or organizing project docs, API references
web-research	Researching online, verifying facts, evaluating options
ask-good-questions	Asking a technical question, reporting a bug

Once installed, say "hello dsh" to DSH and it walks you through, one layer at a time.

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One gotcha

⚠️ The DSH web UI ships with skills disabled (the CLI profile has them on). Verified on 0.1.0-rc.6.

To use skills in the web UI:

npx @deepseek-ai/dsh web --patch ./enable-skills-in-web.yml

That file is in this repo's root.

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What this tutorial found

Writing this meant running DSH end to end on two clean Macs. These behaviors are documented in the tutorial because each one silently blocks a beginner:

Finding	Why it matters
The web profile ships with tool-skill and skill-filesystem disabled; headless has them on	Same skill works in the CLI, silently does nothing in the web UI, with no error
The web UI requires a workspace before the send button activates	The CLI has no such requirement, so it's easy to miss when testing
A stale DSH process holding port 3080 makes the page load normally	New instance exits with EADDRINUSE; the browser silently talks to the old one and no config change appears to take effect
--patch inserts rather than overrides, so patched plugins mount twice	Harmless, but the plugin list shows 7 skill plugins instead of 5
A camelCase frontmatter key drops the entire skill, warning only	Documented fail-closed behavior, but hard to diagnose without knowing it

All verified on 0.1.0-rc.6.

Companion tool

dsh-doctor — config health checks that catch silent failures:

npx dsh-doctor

Read-only. Every rule maps to a real failure documented in DeepSeek's own docs or postmortems.

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How these skills are written

Following DSH's own .agents/skills/ — 11 skills DeepSeek wrote for internal use. What they have in common:

1. Guidance, not a checklist (their words: "This skill is guidance, not a complete checklist")
2. Name the sources of truth, and say "read them, don't restate them"
3. Layer it: blocking requirements / manual checks / what not to do
4. A dedicated "what not to do" section — it prevents more than the positive instructions do

See docs/writing-skills.md.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Two requirements: Chinese, and you actually use it.

License

MIT

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Unofficial community project. Not affiliated with DeepSeek.