Introduction

DeepSeek Harness (DSH) treats everything as a workspace. Traditional remote development usually relies on SSH clients or local mirror synchronization, which cannot seamlessly integrate into the DSH toolchain. This plugin maps remote folders directly to DSH workspaces over the SSH protocol, allowing file tools and shell commands to execute directly on the remote host without a local mirror.

Plugin Overview

Name: dsh-remote-workspaces
Maintainer: januory
License: MIT
Package: dsh-remote-workspaces

This plugin works through an “anchor” mechanism: it creates an empty local anchor directory and records metadata, then DSH uses the anchor to route all file read/write (SFTP) and search (ripgrep) operations to the remote host. It consists of two parts: a host-side component that runs in the DSH process (handling routing and SSH transfers) and a browser-side settings interface.

Core Features

  1. Remote directories as workspaces: Select and open a directory on a remote host from the browser, and DSH takes over that directory. All file tools (read/write/edit/grep/glob) and shell commands execute directly on the remote host, without local mirroring or synchronization.
  2. Multi-host registry: Supports adding, editing, and deleting SSH hosts (alias, host, port, user, key, or password). Credentials are stored locally with AES-256-GCM encryption and are never sent back to the browser.
  3. SSH configuration import: Directly reads and imports configuration aliases from ~/.ssh/config, automatically filling in the connection form.
  4. Connection testing: Verifies host connectivity before use.
  5. Transparent tool routing:
    • read / write / edit are performed over SFTP.
    • grep / glob run remote ripgrep.
    • bash / pwsh are executed through ssh2 exec.
    • Command routing follows the session rather than path spelling, and refuses local execution for non-workspace-directory paths.
  6. Policy-aware remote changes: DSH file policies (such as read-only, workspace-write, and danger-full-access) also apply to remote workspaces.

Installation

Run the following command in the DSH terminal to install the plugin:

dsh plugin --profile web add github:januory/dsh-remote-workspaces

Usage

  1. Open Settings → Remote Workspaces.
  2. Add an SSH host (manually or by importing from ~/.ssh/config), then click Test connection to confirm it is available.
  3. During the workspace addition flow, select the remote host, browse the directory, and open it.

Notes

  • Prerequisites: DeepSeek Harness must be installed (the plugin runtime resolves host services). The host program runs on Node.js 22+, and the plugin itself requires Node.js >= 18.
  • Remote dependencies: The remote host requires rg (ripgrep) for search functionality and sha256sum (or shasum) for post-write checksums. If either is missing, functionality will degrade.
  • Transfer dependencies: Only depends on the ssh2 library; no external SSH binary is required.

Conclusion

dsh-remote-workspaces provides a first-class way to integrate SSH remote directories into DSH, preserving DSH sandbox isolation while supporting policy-based secure remote operations.