Introduction

The design philosophy of DeepSeek Harness (DSH) is “everything is a plugin.” When building agents or managing expert directories, maintaining a standardized set of role descriptions, skill trees, and tool configurations is often time-consuming and labor-intensive. Manually moving files is not only tedious but also error-prone.

This plugin is designed to address the fragmentation between expert directory management and DSH session flows. By reading the local WorkBuddy expert directory, it allows DSH users to browse, install, and switch experts directly in the plugin marketplace, seamlessly integrating expert capabilities into daily workflows.

What It Is

dsh-workbuddy-expert is a DSH Web plugin maintained by community developer pbwheel. It does not download experts online; instead, it acts as a “proxy” for the local WorkBuddy expert directory.

The plugin mainly does two things:
1. Expert Marketplace: Performs read-only scans of the local WorkBuddy expert directory, providing card browsing, search, and categorization, and supports one-click installation, updating, and uninstallation.
2. Session Selector: Provides an expert pill next to the DSH session input box, allowing users to switch the current session’s expert at any time, preserve all history, and take effect at the next model request boundary.

Core Features

By using read-only scanning and file export mechanisms, the plugin achieves standardized management of expert capabilities.

  • Local Expert Marketplace
    By default, the plugin scans the ~/.workbuddy/plugins/marketplaces/experts/plugins directory. It does not connect to the internet; it only performs read-only scans and never modifies the original WorkBuddy directory. The marketplace page supports card browsing, search, and categorization, with action buttons for installation, uninstallation, and updating.

  • Expert Export and Installation
    Installation is essentially export. After selecting an expert, the plugin exports it as a standard expert folder to ~/.dsh/experts/<id>/, including expert.yml, a cleaned role.md, the complete skills directory, and avatar files. Updates support in-place re-export, while uninstallation deletes the entire folder.

  • Session-Level Expert Switching
    In the expert pill next to the session input box, you can expand the expert list and switch between experts. Switching replaces the entire set (role description and skills), but preserves all session history. Switch transactions are serialized, allowing only one switch per session at a time. Switching takes effect at the next model request boundary and does not interrupt the current streaming output.

  • Tool Whitelist and Capability Mounting
    The tools.allow configuration in an expert’s expert.yml is mounted into the current session scope, restricting available tools. The expert’s role description and dedicated skills are also registered or deregistered with the session.

Installation and Activation

Before installation, verify the host environment. DSH desktop and terminal use different profiles (desktop and web), which are not interchangeable.

Terminal Installation

Terminal users must specify --profile web and use the npm package name or Git address:

dsh plugin --profile web add github:pbwheel/dsh-workbuddy-expert

Desktop Installation

Desktop (DeepSeek Harness App) uses the in-app plugin panel. Do not run dsh --profile desktop from the terminal, because that profile is exclusively used by Electron.

  1. Open the sidebar Plugins panel and click Add plugin.
  2. Enter the plugin name dsh-workbuddy-expert (or the repository address github:pbwheel/dsh-workbuddy-expert).
  3. After installation completes, restart the desktop app (the bundle list is only read at startup).

Typical Usage

To use this plugin, you must first “summon” experts in WorkBuddy so that the plugin can scan them.

  1. Install experts: In DSH Settings → WorkBuddy Experts page, click “Install” at the top right corner of the expert card.
  2. Switch experts: Expand the expert pill next to the session input box and select the target expert; or use /expert in the command line to list experts, and /expert <name> to switch.
  3. Create a new session: When creating a new session, you can also select an expert first; it takes effect upon creation.

Applicable Scenarios and Notes

  • Prerequisites: Requires DSH version >= 0.2.0-rc.2.
  • Data source: The plugin does not connect to the internet. You must first click “Summon” in the WorkBuddy desktop Expert Center; after the expert files are written to disk, they can be scanned by the plugin.
  • Profile distinction: Running dsh --profile desktop from the terminal will result in an error; do not confuse them. Desktop users must install via the app panel.
  • Configuration: The default source directory is ~/.workbuddy/plugins/marketplaces/experts/plugins, which can be modified in the settings page. Supporting roots configuration allows adding discovery roots.

Conclusion

This plugin lowers the barrier to expert management in DSH by introducing the local WorkBuddy expert directory. It not only provides visualized marketplace management but also enables seamless session-level expert switching, making it suitable for DSH users who want to统一管理 expert capabilities and improve development efficiency.

GitHub Repository