dsh-superpowers

npm: @dennisrongo/dsh-superpowers · source: dennisrongo/dsh-plugins

Mind the scope. The unscoped dsh-superpowers on npm is an unrelated plugin by another author, so add dsh-superpowers fetches theirs, not this one.

Injects the Superpowers methodology bootstrap (skills/using-superpowers/SKILL.md) into every dsh agent's system prompt as an ordered, persistent section — and serves the 14 Superpowers skills to dsh's skill catalog, so they work on a machine that has never cloned anything.

Upstream harnesses deliver the bootstrap via a SessionStart hook that must re-fire on startup|clear|compact. dsh has no hook shell, but its system prompt is a layered, ordered section registry that is reassembled after compaction — so a single registered section covers all three upstream trigger points for the life of the session, with no gap between session start and the first compaction.

Both halves are independent: neither a missing clone nor a profile without a skills service can take the other down, and neither stops dsh booting.

Where the skills come from

The plugin serves whichever it finds first — your clone if you have one, otherwise a pinned snapshot bundled with the package:

superpowersRoot config → SUPERPOWERS_ROOT → probe of ~/… → bundled vendor/ snapshot

A real clone always wins, so git pull keeps working exactly as before. The snapshot is only the floor that makes a fresh install work — without it, a machine with no clone gets a silently empty catalog, since dsh reports a missing skills root as an empty list rather than an error.

The bootstrap prose is vendored only in that snapshot (obra/superpowers@b36e082, MIT © 2025 Jesse Vincent — see vendor/PROVENANCE). When the plugin resolves your clone instead, nothing from upstream is vendored at all.

Already using link-superpowers-skills.mjs? Set skillProvider: false, or the same 14 skills are listed twice — once by the junctions, once by this provider.

Updating the plugin

dsh plugin --profile <name> outdated
dsh plugin --profile <name> update @dennisrongo/dsh-superpowers

dsh plugin forwards to pnpm. This plugin is host-only, so a profile restart is required — the section is read in apply(), and a browser refresh will not pick it up.

That updates the adapter. The methodology itself lives in your Superpowers clone and updates separately:

Updating from upstream

cd <your superpowers clone> && git pull

Two halves, and they are updated differently:

Half	How it is consumed	After a pull
The bootstrap prompt section	read from <root>/skills/using-superpowers/SKILL.md at profile start	restart the profile (read happens in apply(), not per session)
The skills catalog	discovered by dsh from <agentsHome>/skills	nothing, if those entries are links — see below

Link the clone's skills in once, and a pull updates them in place:

node scripts/link-superpowers-skills.mjs            # from the repo root
node scripts/link-superpowers-skills.mjs --dry-run  # preview
node scripts/link-superpowers-skills.mjs --restore  # undo, restoring saved copies

Junctions on Windows, directory symlinks on macOS/Linux. Real directories already in place are moved to <agentsHome>/skills-backup-superpowers before being replaced, so it is reversible. Re-run it after a pull that adds a new upstream skill.

Locating the clone

Resolution order, first hit wins:

1. superpowersRoot in the profile's cordis.patch.yml
2. the SUPERPOWERS_ROOT environment variable
3. a probe of common clone locations under your home directory — ~/superpowers, ~/src, ~/code, ~/dev, ~/git, ~/repos, ~/Projects, ~/Documents, ~/Documents/GitHub, all derived from homedir() so they work on any platform
4. the bundled vendor/ snapshot, which is always present

Because step 4 always succeeds, you get the bootstrap and the skills with no configuration at all. Set superpowersRoot when you want your own clone to be authoritative — it takes precedence, and then git pull (plus a profile restart) is the whole update path. The probe list is only a guess about where you keep clones.

The old "no superpowers clone found" warning is now reachable only when a root you configured explicitly is wrong.

Install (profile-level)

# <profile>/cordis.patch.yml — add one row
- id: superpowers
  name: '@dennisrongo/dsh-superpowers'
  config:
    superpowersRoot: /absolute/path/to/superpowers

with pnpm add "file:/absolute/path/to/dsh-plugins/plugins/dsh-superpowers" in the profile, or straight from GitHub:

dsh plugin --profile <name> add "github:dennisrongo/dsh-plugins#path:/plugins/dsh-superpowers"

The folder is plugins/dsh-superpowers but the package is @dennisrongo/dsh-superpowers, so it installs under the scope. Mind the difference: the unscoped dsh-superpowers on npm is an unrelated plugin by another author, so add dsh-superpowers fetches theirs, not this one.

Config

key	default	meaning
superpowersRoot	"" → resolved (see above)	repo root containing skills/using-superpowers/SKILL.md
order	-50	prompt section order (persona is 0; we sit before it)
enabled	true	master switch; false silences every section and the skill provider
askWithOptions	true	register the "offer choices as choices" section (below)
askWithOptionsOrder	-45	order for that section
skillProvider	true	serve the skills to dsh's catalog; set false if you deliver them another way

Also: "offer choices as choices"

A second, independent prompt section — hand-written here, nothing to do with the Superpowers clone, and registered whether or not that clone exists.

dsh can already render a real picker. ask_user_question accepts options[] with a label and a one-line description, plus multi_select, and the shipped question UI turns that into a radiogroup or a checkbox group. What it cannot do is turn prose into controls: a structured surface exists only for an actual tool call, and a tool call can only happen during a turn. So an answer that ends "A or B?" in markdown stays markdown forever, and you pay for it by typing a reply that the model then has to guess the meaning of.

This section asks the model to reach for the tool in exactly that moment — with a recommended option first, and multi_select when more than one can apply. It deliberately stands down in plan mode, where dsh's own rules make exit_plan_mode the single interaction and say so in terms that override later guidance.

Set askWithOptions: false to drop it without touching the bootstrap.

Tests

pnpm test    # offline, no harness, no clone needed

Every failure mode in this plugin is silent by design — a missing clone, a bad root, enabled: false, an absent skills service and a malformed skill bundle all register nothing and let dsh boot normally. So a regression breaks nothing visibly; the bootstrap and the catalog just stop reaching the model.

35 checks pin section identity and order, frontmatter stripping, the resolution precedence (config > env > probe > vendored snapshot), the non-fatal warning path, the skill-provider contract, and that registration goes through ctx.effect.

test/sabotage.mjs then breaks lib/index.js 16 different ways and requires the suite to go red each time — a check that has never failed is decoration. Two checks escaped the first run and were rewritten; see AGENTS.md.

Notes

• The bootstrap body has its YAML frontmatter stripped — the model needs the behavioural mandate, not the trigger metadata. If upstream restructures SKILL.md, that regex in lib/index.js is the thing to check; failure is non-fatal and logs [dsh-superpowers] cannot read …, so watch profile stderr after a pull.
• @deepseek-ai/schemastery and @deepseek-ai/cordis are peers, supplied by your dsh install. When this package is junctioned into a profile it resolves them through its own node_modules/@deepseek-ai/* — run scripts/dev-link.ps1 to create those, or the harness fails to load the plugin with ERR_MODULE_NOT_FOUND.

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About the author

Plugins and walkthroughs on YouTube @codingmenace — I build AI coding tools in public, including DeepSeek Harness itself. More at dennisrongo.com.