Preface

The core philosophy of DeepSeek Harness Desktop (DSH) is “everything is a plugin.” When developing agents, managing MCP servers and Skills often requires manually editing configuration files, which is not only cumbersome but also error-prone. dsh-skill-mcp-manager provides DSH with a unified management interface within the settings page for creating, reading, updating, and deleting MCP servers and Skills, without manually modifying the DSH source code.

What Is This

This is a plugin for DeepSeek Harness Desktop that provides a unified management interface for MCP servers and Skills within the settings page. It is maintained by kiligzzz. It is implemented based on the official DSH dual-sided plugin mechanism (host + browser side), loaded through a profile bundle, and persists across DSH upgrades.

Core Features

The plugin mainly includes the following functional modules:

  • Skill Management

    • Lists all Skills, supports search by name or description, and displays the enabled status.
    • Toggle: enables/disables by modifying the disable-model-invocation flag in the frontmatter.
    • Delete: regular entries delete the file/directory; symlinks only delete the link itself and do not affect the target.
    • Import: uploads .md files, and automatically normalizes the name to kebab-case.
    • Folder synchronization: uses ln -s to create symlinks, so changes in the source folder take effect in real time.
    • Open editor: uses open on macOS and xdg-open on Linux.

  • MCP Management

    • Adds, edits, and deletes servers; supports stdio (command, arguments, environment variables, working directory) and streamable-http (URL, request headers).
    • Progressive per-session loading: it does not connect to MCP at startup and does not inject native tool Schemas. After the model matches a Server description, it calls mcp_session(load), then loads the Server’s tools via @deepseek-ai/dsh-mcp-client.
    • mcp_session supports load / unload / status, and different sessions do not affect each other.
    • After directly editing ~/.dsh/mcp.json, the description directory refreshes within 3 seconds, and only sessions that have already loaded that Server are safely reconnected.

  • Capability manifest prompt segment

    • The system prompt of each session appends a compact capability:mcp segment, listing only the name, description, and whether loading is allowed for configured Servers. Full tool Schemas are loaded only when needed by the model.

Installation and Enabling

This plugin requires a DSH environment that supports profile bundle patch. Add the following dependencies and configuration to the profile’s package.json:

{
  "dependencies": {
    "@kiligzzz/dsh-skill-mcp-manager": "^0.3.0"
  },
  "dsh": {
    "profile": {
      "bundles": ["@kiligzzz/dsh-skill-mcp-manager"]
    }
  }
}

After installation, restart DSH. The plugin includes cordis.patch.yml, so there is no need to manually write cordis.patch.yml insert lines.

Typical Usage

  • Progressive loading: after the model matches a Server description, it calls mcp_session(load) to load the tools.
  • Configuration hot update: after directly editing ~/.dsh/mcp.json, the description directory refreshes within 3 seconds, and only sessions that have already loaded that Server are safely reconnected.
  • Symlink synchronization: link Skills in the source folder to ~/.dsh/skills one by one with ln -s symlinks, and source changes take effect in real time.

Notes

  • This plugin runs with the permissions of the current DSH process; inspect the source code and license before installing.
  • Dependency environment: it requires a DSH environment that supports profile bundle patch.
  • Host dependencies: the Host side depends on the loader service to resolve @deepseek-ai/dsh-mcp-client from the DSH runtime (this package is not published with this plugin).
  • Browser-side dependencies: the browser side depends on the slots service (settings.section slot).
  • Configuration format: ~/.dsh/mcp.json is written in map format { "name": { ... } }; the old { "servers": [...] } array format is automatically migrated on first read.
  • Destructive operations: deleting or toggling Skills writes files under ~/.dsh/skills. The UI confirms such operations before they are performed.

Conclusion

dsh-skill-mcp-manager solves the configuration-file editing issue for managing Skills and MCP Servers in DSH through a unified interface, and optimizes resource usage through progressive loading. For more details and source code, refer to GitHub or the skill community catalog.