Preface

DeepSeek Harness (hereinafter referred to as DSH) is an agent runtime open-sourced by DeepSeek. The official repository deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness summarizes it in one sentence: Everything is a Plugin —— model adaptation, tools, sessions, permissions, even the web interface can be assembled as a profile. It is currently in the developer preview stage, and the official README notes that there will be breaking compatibility changes.

After running an agent for a long time, the context window rarely only holds “the few sentences you just said”. System prompts, tool schemas, skill or plugin injections, assistant replies, and tool returns will all squeeze into the same budget. When the conversation slows down, becomes muddled, or is suddenly compressed, the terminal only shows a total number, making it impossible to tell which block filled up the window.

dsh-context was made to demystify this: it adds a context insight panel to the Web UI and provides the /context command to show what the current window is composed of, how each round of requests grows, and where compression and pruning occur. This article is collated after cross-checking with the community plugin directory page, GitHub repository README / package.json, npm package page, and the DSH official repository.

It should be noted first: the community plugin directory deepseek-harness-plugin.com is an independent site used to search for repositories tagged with the dsh-plugin topic. It has no official affiliation with DeepSeek / HyperMind and should not be treated as an official app store.

What is it

dsh-context is a session and messaging DSH plugin maintained by GitHub user bowenliang123, with the repository address at bowenliang123/dsh-context. The directory page positions it as “Context Insight Dashboard: See clearly what the model’s context window is composed of and how it evolves.” The repository README is more specific: it provides a Context tab and the /context command to help understand how the context is assembled and how it evolves.

The community directory included this plugin on 2026-08-15, categorized under “Session and Messaging”, licensed under Apache-2.0, and primarily written in TypeScript. The npm package name is also dsh-context, and as of 2026-08-17, the version on the page is 0.10.3. The package.json marks the client platform as web and injects Web UI dependencies such as @deepseek-ai/dsh-client-ui-conversation, so it targets the dsh web stack, not the headless pure command line.

As of 2026-08-17, the GitHub repository has 115 stars; on the same day, the community directory page still showed 36. The directory numbers may lag behind, so refer to the repository page for star counts.

Core Features

The repository README splits the interface into two entry points and five content sections. The entry points are:

  1. Context Tab: After opening any session, click this tab to see the full insight panel covering composition, round-by-round history, compression, and the message surface visible to the current model.
  2. /context Command: Type /context in the input box, or select it from the / menu and press Enter. A centered dialog box will pop up, displaying the same set of summaries as the tab: occupancy titles anchored by service provider data, six types of composition bars, and a trend chart of the last 10 rounds. Hovering the mouse over or clicking a bar will show the details just like in the tab.

The content visible in the tab is as follows.

Session Statistics. The number of rounds and steps in the current session, as well as how many times injections, compressions, and prunings have occurred. Use this to first determine if this conversation has been “tweaked” before diving into individual messages.

Current Composition. A six-color stacked bar scaled to the model’s full context window, with the gray track representing remaining margin. The six categories are: system prompts, tool schemas, user messages, injected context, assistant replies, and tool results. It will also list the top 5 most resource-intensive tool schemas. The README states it directly: when your conversation starts to degrade, first check which block is eating up the budget.

History. A stacked bar drawn for each model request, with finer granularity than “per message”. You can switch between Turn and Step, scroll horizontally through the entire session, hover to see a summary, and click to pin the full breakdown. The breakdown will compare estimated tokens with the actual prompt / output tokens reported by the service provider. Locations where compression or pruning occurred are marked with ✂, and the bar will drop noticeably.

The README includes an in-repository session example: around 48 rounds grew to approximately 563,000 tokens, after which a single compression recovered −535,500 tokens, and the conversation continued from a much smaller window. This is an example written by the maintainer in the documentation, not a third-party evaluation.

At the Step granularity, hovering over a bar will immediately display the round/step number of that step, timestamp, as well as estimated and vendor-reported values.

Context Events. Every compression, tool output pruning, skill or plugin context injection, and model switch will leave an event: token changes, the round/step they belong to, and timestamp. Use this to answer “why did the window change suddenly” instead of just seeing the result.

Current Model-Visible Messages. The list of messages the model actually sees at this moment, with the most recent first, and the token overhead of each message attached. It shows “the input sent in now”, not the full set of local chat logs.

Installation and Activation

The installation command given on the community directory page is as follows, run it in the DeepSeek Harness terminal:

dsh plugin add github:bowenliang123/dsh-context

The directory page also notes that for reproducible installations, you can pin the commit hash:

dsh plugin add github:bowenliang123/dsh-context#commit

Replace #commit with the specific commit hash. The plugin runs with the permissions of the current dsh process, and may execute code during installation. You should inspect the source code repository and license before installing.

The repository README and npm page give another command to install via package name into the web profile:

dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-context

Then start the Web UI:

dsh web

The README specifies that this path does not require additional building or restarting. The official repository’s dsh web is an alias for --profile web, and by default opens the interface at http://127.0.0.1:3080. The two installation commands point to the same repository/npm package; the directory page uses the github:owner/repo format, while the README uses the npm package name plus --profile web. If you are already using the Web UI, adding it to the web profile as per the README is more direct.

Typical Usage

After installation and running dsh web, the usage per the README has only two steps.

  1. Open any session and click the Context tab. First look at the top statistics and current composition bar: how much each of system prompts, tool schemas, user messages, injected content, assistant replies, and tool results occupies, and how much gray space remains. If a particular tool is particularly “expensive”, check the top 5 most resource-intensive schemas.
  2. If you need a quick glance during input without leaving the conversation area: type /context or select it from the / menu, then press Enter to bring up the centered dialog box. The title, six types of composition bars, last 10-round trend, and tab all use the same data, and hovering or clicking the bars will expand the details.

When troubleshooting long sessions, you can cross-reference three sections:
- Find ✂ in the history chart to confirm which request the compression or pruning occurred in.
- Verify the reason in the event list: compression, tool output pruning, skill/plugin injection, or model switch.
- Check the message list to confirm which entries are “what the model sees right now” and how many tokens each costs.

Do not mix the two granularities of Turn / Step: use Turn to see the ups and downs of a round of conversation; switch to Step to align a specific tool call or compression step.

Applicable Scenarios and Notes

It is most suitable for users who are already using dsh web and often have sessions spanning many rounds with a batch of tools or skill injections. Typical scenarios include:
- Conversation quality suddenly drops, and you want to confirm whether it is due to bloated tool results, heavy schemas, or injections filling up the window.
- Just triggered a compression, and you want to verify how many tokens were recovered and what size the window continued from afterwards.
- You need to compare estimated tokens with the actual usage reported by the service provider, instead of just trusting local estimates.

There are several boundaries to keep in mind before using:
1. This is a Web UI plugin. The dsh.client.platform in package.json is web, and the startup method in the README is also dsh web. Do not expect it to draw the same dashboard in a headless pure text session.
2. The community directory is an independent site, not an official DeepSeek app store. Follow the original text on the directory page and the repository README for installation commands, do not piece together GitHub addresses based on the plugin name alone.
3. The plugin runs with the permissions of the current dsh process, and may execute code during installation. Read the repository source code and Apache-2.0 license before installing; for production environments, it is recommended to pin the commit instead of always tracking the default branch.
4. DSH itself is in developer preview, and the official README notes that there will be breaking compatibility changes. The plugin version also iterates quickly: npm published 0.1.0 on 2026-08-14, and reached 0.10.3 by 2026-08-17. The interface fields and command behavior are subject to the current repository README.
5. The numbers of approximately 563,000 tokens and a single compression recovering −535,500 tokens in the README are session examples written by the maintainer to explain how to read the history chart and ✂ markers, and should not be treated as capacity guarantees for your own project.

Summary

dsh-context breaks down “what is actually in the context window” from a single total number into composition, history, events, and currently visible messages. There are two entry points: the Context tab in the session, and the /context command in the input box. It is maintained by bowenliang123, licensed under Apache-2.0, and targeted at DSH’s Web UI.

Directory page: https://deepseek-harness-plugin.com/zh-CN/plugins/dsh-context/

GitHub: https://github.com/bowenliang123/dsh-context