dsh-memory-notes

Persistent cross-session memory for DeepSeek Harness (DSH) agents.

Agent conversations die with the session. This plugin gives an agent durable notes that survive it:

• Auto-injection — the contents of a notes directory (default $DSH_HOME/memory/*.md) are rendered into every session's system prompt as a memory:notes context block. The agent sees its past decisions without having to remember to look for them.
• A remember tool — the agent lists, reads, adds and updates notes through a real tool. Writes happen in the harness process, outside the agent's per-session file sandbox, so memory works in every sandbox mode (read-only sessions can still read injected notes; workspace-write and danger-full-access sessions can also write).
• Human-editable — notes are plain markdown files with a three-line frontmatter block (topic / updated / status). You can add or correct a note with any text editor.

Install

DSH's installer forwards to pnpm, so pnpm must be on PATH:

dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-memory-notes      # or: --profile headless, --profile <name>

Without pnpm it stops with dsh: pnpm was not found; install pnpm and make it available on PATH. Where pnpm exists, prefer this route: DSH validates the package's DSH peer ranges before installing, so a runtime the plugin does not support refuses the install instead of skipping the bundle later.

Then add the bundle row to the profile manifest $DSH_HOME/profiles/<name>/package.json:

"dsh": {
  "profile": {
    "bundles": [
      "@deepseek-ai/dsh-base",
      "@deepseek-ai/dsh-web-app",
      "dsh-memory-notes"
    ]
  }
}

Without pnpm

A profile directory is a plain package project, so npm works as well:

cd "$DSH_HOME/profiles/web"
npm i dsh-memory-notes

npm does not run DSH's install-time peer check, so an incompatible @deepseek-ai/dsh-* peer range is reported only when the profile starts.

Restart the profile for the new bundle to load (an HMR-enabled profile recomposes instead), then verify:

dsh --profile web --dump-config | grep -A 8 memory

If that prints dsh: skipping profile bundle "dsh-memory-notes", the installed version's peer ranges do not cover your DSH runtime — install a compatible version rather than granting a version exemption, which leaves the stale range in place and switches the check off for that pair.

npm run from inside a DSH session can fail with EPERM ... ~/.npm/_cacache because the npm cache sits outside the session's file sandbox; add --cache /tmp/npm-cache-dsh when it does.

Configuration

Patch the memory row in $DSH_HOME/cordis.patch.yml (last write wins):

- replace:
    - id: memory
      config:
        memoryDir: ''      # '' = $DSH_HOME/memory
        maxBytes: 16384    # byte budget for the injected context block
        maxFiles: 24       # max note files injected

Note format

---
topic: delegation-heuristics
updated: 2026-08-19
status: active
---

# Delegation heuristics

- Delegate when fresh context buys context economy or epistemic independence.

status values: active (default), superseded (kept for the record, prefer its replacement), pending. The remember tool maintains the frontmatter for you; the agent is instructed to revise existing notes instead of duplicating them.

Development

To run the checkout instead of a published version, install the directory itself. npm records a file: dependency and symlinks it, so edits here are live in the profile:

cd "$DSH_HOME/profiles/web"
npm i file:/path/to/dsh-plugins/plugins/dsh-memory-notes

The pnpm equivalent is dsh plugin --profile web add /path/to/dsh-plugins/plugins/dsh-memory-notes; DSH reads an absolute path's package.json before installing it. Either way the profile's package.json records the link, so a later plain install does not drop it.

The plugin is a single ESM file (index.js), a Cordis plugin exporting { name, Config, apply }, wired through cordis.patch.yml as a bundle patch row. apply registers one system-prompt section, one system-prompt context, and one tool — following the same seams the shipped DSH packages use (systemPrompt.section / systemPrompt.context / tools.register + defineTool).

License

MIT