Introduction

The core of the DeepSeek Harness (DSH) ecosystem is plugin-based extension. DSH itself includes a lightweight schedule extension, mainly used for setting reminders or scheduled prompts within active conversations. When continuous background tasks are required (such as periodically checking API health, synchronizing databases, or generating daily morning briefings), this immediate, conversation-style scheduling approach is insufficient.

@goodandready/dsh-cron is a plugin designed for these requirements. It provides DeepSeek Harness with a native full-stack scheduling and background automation engine, supporting scheduled task management through a visual interface or natural language instructions.

Plugin Introduction

This plugin is maintained by GooDAnDReaDY and is open-sourced under the MIT license.

Core Positioning: A scheduled Cron task, background automation, and agent execution engine for DeepSeek Harness.

Runtime Environment: Requires a Node.js 20+ environment.

Core Features

The plugin provides the following main capabilities:

  1. Feature-rich visual task manager
    A clock icon entry is provided in the DSH sidebar. Clicking it expands the task list. The panel supports filtering by status (All, Active, Paused, Completed). Users can view each task’s next run time, execution history (including status, duration, and output), statistics (run count, Token consumption), and total cost. Manual triggering, pause/resume, and task deletion are supported.

  2. Interactive “Create with DSH” workflow
    A dialog-based entry is provided, where users can describe requirements in natural language (for example, “check open PRs and draft comments”). The plugin launches a dedicated Agent session to help convert the requirement into a specific Cron expression and task configuration.

  3. Autonomous AI tool calling
    The Agent can manage background automation through a unified cron tool (with actions such as create, list, get, update, pause, resume, run, and delete), without needing to write a separate Schema for each operation.

  4. Robust scheduler and atomic storage
    Built on the croner library, it supports Cron expressions and natural interval syntax (such as 15m and 1h). Task configurations are persisted atomically, with execution history and cost tracking.

  5. Six execution runtimes
    It supports the following execution environments:

    • Shell
    • Node.js
    • Python
    • HTTP/Webhook
    • Remote SSH
    • Docker

  6. Multi-channel notifications and templates
    Task execution results can be distributed simultaneously to 9 channels, including Telegram, dsh-kanban, Discord, Slack, ntfy, Bark, PushPlus, voice (dsh-tts), and Gitea. It supports using {variable} templates to reference variables and referencing sensitive information through DSH credential names.

Installation and Dependencies

This plugin is installed as a DSH plugin and depends on the following DSH core modules at runtime:

@deepseek-ai/cordis >= 4.0.1
@deepseek-ai/dsh-agent >= 0.1.0-rc.6
@deepseek-ai/dsh-llm >= 0.1.0-rc.6
@deepseek-ai/dsh-session >= 0.1.0-rc.6
@deepseek-ai/dsh-settings >= 0.1.0-rc.6
@deepseek-ai/dsh-tools >= 0.1.0-rc.6
schemaster

Typical Usage

The plugin is suitable for the following automation scenarios:
* Checking open PRs and drafting review comments
* Periodically checking API health
* Database synchronization
* Generating daily morning briefings
* Error tracker classification

Applicable Scenarios and Notes

This plugin is suitable for developers who need tasks that run long-term in the background, are triggered periodically, or must execute across environments. Because tasks run under the permissions of the current DSH process, it is recommended to review the source code and license (MIT) before installation to ensure security and compliance requirements are met.

Conclusion

With @goodandready/dsh-cron, developers can build automation systems in DSH with continuous operational capabilities. For more details, refer to the GitHub repository.