Introduction

The plugin ecosystem of DeepSeek Harness allows users to enhance the experience by adding extensions. In the default flow, creating a session usually requires registering a Workspace or selecting a project first, which increases pre-chat operational overhead. The tobewin/dsh-temporary-chat plugin introduces a “chat first, create project later” workflow, allowing developers to start a chat directly without being tied to a specific Workspace.

Plugin Positioning

Maintained by community developer ToBeWin, the plugin aims to provide temporary chat capability for DeepSeek Harness without a workspace. It adds an action entry in the sidebar and creates a real, ungrouped native Session, rather than a fake workspace or a forked UI. The plugin strictly follows DSH extension specifications and does not rely on private components.

Core Features

The plugin provides the following capabilities:

  1. Sidebar Action: Adds a Temporary chat action entry in the DSH sidebar.
  2. Native Session Creation: Creates a native session that is not registered to a Workspace, so it appears in the Ungrouped area of Harness.
  3. First Message Focusing: Before sending the first message, provides a focused editor that allows selecting an Agent preset, access mode, model, and reasoning intensity.
  4. UI Handover: After sending the first message, control is handed back to the native Harness session UI, keeping the subsequent chat experience consistent.
  5. Language Following: Follows the Chinese/English language switching in Harness settings in real time.

Installation and Enablement

Install it using the npm package. After installation, restart the Web Host.

dsh plugin --profile web add @tobewin/dsh-temporary-chat

After installation, click Temporary chat in the sidebar to start using it.

Usage Flow

  1. Click Temporary chat in the sidebar.
  2. The plugin creates a native, ungrouped DSH Session in the background.
  3. In the first-message editor, select the Agent presets, models, reasoning intensity, and access modes configured for the current Host.
  4. Send the message. After sending, the session switches to the native Harness session UI, and subsequent operations remain consistent.

Architecture and Security Boundaries

The design goal of the plugin is decoupling. It uses only public extension slots and APIs, including Session creation, input, model, Agent presets, and session commands. It does not perform the following:

  • Modifying, copying, patching, or forking Harness source code.
  • Importing private runtime components.
  • Scraping or tampering with the DSH DOM.
  • Uploading chat content, project files, or model keys.

Important Note: “Temporary” only means that the session does not belong to a DSH Workspace. The official Session creation API may still use the Host’s default working directory to execute tools, so a temporary chat is not equivalent to a tool sandbox. If you need to restrict local file operations, it is recommended to select read-only access mode in the first-message configuration.

Compatibility

The first version has been validated for DeepSeek Harness 0.1.0-rc.6 and Web Host 0.0.1. The plugin checks the public Host version, and if it is outside the validated range, it automatically disables the entry. New Harness versions may require developer validation before being supported.

Conclusion

dsh-temporary-chat delivers a low-friction temporary chat experience by reusing the native Harness Session model. For users who need frequent testing, quick idea validation, or only a simple conversation, this plugin is a practical tool.