DeepSeek Harness (DSH) is built around the core design principle that “everything is a plugin.” When developers want to add instant messaging capabilities to DSH agentic workflows, they usually need to write their own adapters or maintain separate bot systems. DeepSeek Harness Messenger is a bridge plugin that connects DeepSeek Harness to Telegram and is maintained by syncended. It feeds Telegram message streams into DSH’s session and tooling system, allowing users to interact directly with DSH agents through a Telegram bot and enabling session management, task dispatch, and status notifications.

Core Features

The plugin is configured through the Messengers page in DSH Web Settings, uses DSH credential storage to manage the Telegram bot-token, and supports real-time reconfiguration without restarting the host.

  • Session Management and Dashboard
    The plugin provides a native Telegram command menu and an inline button control panel for managing the current session. It supports listing and restoring persistent top-level DSH sessions, and allows selecting an existing registered DSH workspace when creating a new session. Session bindings are persistent and survive host restarts and real-time reconfiguration. The dashboard uses DSH workspace display names instead of obscure session hashes.

  • Interaction and Control
    The plugin supports model selection, reasoning control, permission presets, context monitoring, steering, and cancellation. The ask_user_question tool supports interactive selection, multi-select, and free-text responses. The interface provides Claude-style animated progress, typing activity, streamed message edits, and tool status display.

  • Multimedia Handling
    It supports using Telegram photos or documents as DSH image prompts while preserving literal captions. It supports on-demand local Whisper transcription of Telegram voice messages. The messenger_send_image tool allows agents to send generated image files through explicit tool calls.

  • Transport Adaptation
    The plugin implements a shared MessengerAdapter interface, currently using the Telegram Bot API as its initial transport and reserving extensibility for future transports such as Yandex Messenger and Discord.

Installation and Dependencies

The plugin depends on the core DSH runtime environment. Before installing, make sure your local environment includes the following peerDependencies:

{
  "@deepseek-ai/cordis": "^4.0.2",
  "@deepseek-ai/dsh-agent": "^0.1.2-rc.1",
  "@deepseek-ai/dsh-attachment": "^0.1.2-rc.1",
  "@deepseek-ai/dsh-api-remotes": "^0.1.2-rc.1",
  "@deepseek-ai/dsh-api-session-control": "^0.1.2-rc.1"
}

Typical Usage

Command Actions

Send the following commands in Telegram to control sessions and the dashboard:

  • /start or /menu: Open the dashboard.
  • /sessions: List recent persistent top-level DSH sessions.
  • /resume [session-id]: Resume a session (you can select it using buttons or specify the ID directly).
  • /new: Create and bind a new session (a workspace selection is required).
  • /status: Refresh the dashboard.
  • /model: Select a model.
  • /reasoning: Select the reasoning effort level.
  • /permission: Select a permission preset.
  • /context: View context pressure, composition, and cumulative usage.
  • /steer <text>: Send a steering prompt for the current turn.
  • /cancel: Request cancellation of the current turn.
  • /unbind: Remove the current binding (notifications are preserved).
  • /notifications [on|off]: Subscribe to or unsubscribe from host-level automated notifications.
  • /help: Display command help.

Image Handling

  • Sending Images: After /resume or /new, send a Telegram photo or a PNG/JPEG/WebP/GIF document directly (with an optional caption). The system downloads the largest available version and stores it as a DSH attachment. Image size is limited to 20 MiB.
    • JPEG/PNG files smaller than 10 MiB use sendPhoto; larger files or GIF/WebP files use sendDocument.
  • Receiving Images: Images enter the DSH session history and can be used for subsequent model processing.
  • Sending Generated Images: Agents use the messenger_send_image tool to send files in their responses. For example:
{
  "file_path": "output/chart.png"
}

This tool sends the file to the currently authorized chat.

Use Cases and Notes

  • Use Cases: Agent development scenarios that require remotely managing DSH sessions through Telegram, receiving host-level automated notifications, conducting multi-turn conversation interactions, or leveraging Telegram multimedia capabilities for image prompts.
  • Notes:
    • Downloads begin only in authorized chats or by operators when a session has been selected.
    • Image transfers are subject to a 20 MiB limit and bounded download timeouts.
    • Send operations do not automatically retry after errors or cancellation.
    • /notifications subscriptions are independent from session bindings and can be enabled without /resume or /new.
    • Notification delivery does not switch the currently selected session; it is used only for subscriptions.

This plugin reduces the complexity of multi-platform integration through a unified adapter interface and provides standard communication capabilities for the DSH plugin ecosystem.