DeepSeek Harness

dsh forgets everything when a session ends. This plugin gives it memory that doesn’t: what you’re building, how you like to work, and what you decided last week and why — carried across context resets, restarts, and fresh chats. It is a native Cordis plugin, not a hook bridge, so it hooks the harness’s own extension points directly.

Quick Start

Step 1: Get Your Honcho API Key

Go to app.honcho.dev
Sign up or log in
Copy your API key (starts with hch-)

Step 2: Install the Plugin

This plugin requires a running DeepSeek Harness. Plugins install into a named profile, so pick the one you actually run — web, headless, acp, or your own.

dsh plugin --profile <name> add @honcho-ai/dsh-honcho

dsh plugin forwards to your package manager and appends the plugin to that profile’s bundle list. Because the package declares dsh.bundle, it activates as a configuration layer rather than sitting inert as a plain dependency.

Step 3: Configure

Put your key and name in ~/.honcho/config.json:

{
  "peerName": "your-name",
  "auth": { "apiKey": "${HONCHO_API_KEY}" },
  "hosts": {
    "dsh": { "workspace": "dsh" }
  }
}

HONCHO_API_KEY in the environment works on its own — the config file is only needed to change defaults.

Step 4: Verify

Start dsh and run /honcho. You’ll see your peer, workspace, session, and sync status, plus a link to the session in the Honcho dashboard.

In the dsh web client, /honcho output renders in the collapsed command panel rather than inline in the transcript. Expand the panel to read it.

What You Get

Memory at session start — your profile, a summary of this project’s session so far, and the conclusions relevant to what you just asked, shaped to a character budget in a single API call
Automatic capture — user and assistant turns stream to Honcho in the background, debounced, and flushed at turn boundaries, before compaction, and on shutdown
Secret redaction — messages are scrubbed before they leave your machine
Agent tools — first-class search, reasoning, and conclusion-writing inside dsh
Shared configuration — the same ~/.honcho/config.json every other Honcho integration reads

Configuration

Configuration lives in ~/.honcho/config.json, shared with the other Honcho hosts. The root holds identity and connection; behavior lives under hosts.dsh.

{
  "peerName": "your-name",
  "workspace": "honcho",
  "baseUrl": "https://api.honcho.dev", // bare host or …/v3 both fine
  "timeoutMs": 30000,
  "auth": { "apiKey": "${HONCHO_API_KEY}" },
  "enabled": true, // global kill switch

  "hosts": {
    "dsh": {
      "workspace": "dsh",
      "aiPeer": "dsh", // defaults to the host name
      "observationMode": "unified", // unified | directional
      "sessionStrategy": "per-directory",
      "sessionPeerPrefix": true, // session names are <peer>-<dir>
      "sessions": { "/path/to/repo": "pinned-session-name" },

      "injection": {
        "sessionStart": ["directives", "summary", "peerCard"],
        "perTurn": ["userContext", "dialectic"],
        "tools": true,
        "searchTopK": 10,
        "searchMaxDistance": 0.6,
        "maxConclusions": 15, // how many conclusions Honcho RETURNS
        "maxRenderedConclusions": 4, // how many survive into the prompt
        "contextTokens": 1500,
        "cadence": { "dialectic": 5, "ttlSeconds": 300 },
        "dialectic": {
          "reasoning": "low", // minimal | low | medium | high | max
          "maxChars": 600
        }
      },

      "capture": {
        "saveMessages": true,
        "saveToolUse": false, // one-line summaries of tool activity
        "writeFrequency": "async", // async | sync
        "noisePatterns": [] // additive to the built-in secret patterns
      },

      "messageUpload": {
        "maxUserTokens": 6000,
        "maxAssistantTokens": 6000
      }
    }
  }
}

Unsupported or renamed keys are reported at startup rather than silently ignored, so a stale config tells you what it is no longer doing.

Injection Components

The two menus differ in cadence, not in what they can carry. injection.sessionStart is injected once when a session opens: directives, summary, peerCard, representation. injection.perTurn refreshes as you work:

Component	Behavior
`userContext`	A fresh, prompt-scoped bundle of representation + peer card, retrieved using your current message as the search query — so recall is associative rather than merely recent
`dialectic`	A reasoned answer about you, run every `cadence.dialectic` turns. Nothing waits on it after the first turn, so a late answer reaches the next one

To get the representation without the peer card (or vice versa), name it in sessionStart and set perTurn: [] — at the cost of per-turn refresh.

Session Strategies

Strategy	Session name	Notes
`per-directory` (default)	`<peer>-<dir>`	Stable across restarts and branches
`per-repo`	`<peer>-<repo-root>`	Same memory from any subdirectory
`git-branch`	`<peer>-<dir>-<branch>`	Falls back to `per-directory` outside a repo or on a detached HEAD
`per-session`	`<peer>-chat-<id>`	A clean slate every restart
`global`	`<peer>`	One memory for everything

Prefer the wider scopes. The background Deriver needs a single session to accumulate enough material before it can reason well. git-branch splits a project’s memory per branch, and per-session discards it on every restart.

Each integration defaults to its own Honcho workspace — dsh here, claude_code for claude-honcho — and a workspace is the isolation boundary, so by default they do not see each other’s memory. Point them at the same workspace to merge them:

"hosts": {
  "dsh":         { "workspace": "shared" },
  "claude_code": { "workspace": "shared" }
}

Keep peerName identical across them too, since conclusions are stored per peer.

Commands

Command	Description
`/honcho`	Status: peer, workspace, session, strategy, pending uploads, last sync, last fetch
`/honcho config`	Resolved settings, the file they came from, and any ignored injection components
`/honcho flush`	Sync now

Agent Tools

Tool	Description
`honcho_search`	Look something up — searches raw messages and derived conclusions
`honcho_chat`	Ask a question of judgment. Reasons over everything Honcho knows; slower
`honcho_remember`	Save a durable fact, preference, or decision

Set injection.tools to false to inject memory without exposing tools.

Requirements

Node ^22.19.0 || >=24.0.0
A running dsh
A Honcho API key, or a self-hosted Honcho at baseUrl

Next Steps

GitHub Repository

Source code, issues, and README.

Honcho Architecture

Learn about peers, sessions, and dialectic reasoning.

Overview

Integrations

Tutorials

Community Integrations

Migrations

DeepSeek Harness

Quick Start

Step 1: Get Your Honcho API Key

Step 2: Install the Plugin

Step 3: Configure

Step 4: Verify

What You Get

Configuration

Injection Components

Session Strategies

Commands

Agent Tools

Requirements

Next Steps

GitHub Repository

Honcho Architecture

​Quick Start

​Step 1: Get Your Honcho API Key

​Step 2: Install the Plugin

​Step 3: Configure

​Step 4: Verify

​What You Get

​Configuration

​Injection Components

​Session Strategies

​Sharing Memory With Other Integrations

​Commands

​Agent Tools

​Requirements

​Next Steps

GitHub Repository

Honcho Architecture

Quick Start

Step 1: Get Your Honcho API Key

Step 2: Install the Plugin

Step 3: Configure

Step 4: Verify

What You Get

Configuration

Injection Components

Session Strategies

Sharing Memory With Other Integrations

Commands

Agent Tools

Requirements

Next Steps