Special Topic

Inside DeepSeek Harness

Follow a plugin-based agent foundation from session logs to tool calls, compaction, inboxes, and sandboxed execution. This is an optional source-reading track for people who want to see the abstractions behind the interface.

29 notesOpen reading · no login
Special Topic29notes

THE QUESTION THIS PAGE ANSWERS

ANSWER FIRST

What will the “Inside DeepSeek Harness” AI learning path help you do?

Follow a plugin-based agent foundation from session logs to tool calls, compaction, inboxes, and sandboxed execution. This is an optional source-reading track for people who want to see the abstractions behind the interface. The path contains 29 free notes, each centered on one question you can understand and test.

DECISION RULE

Core themes include System Map, Sessions & Loops, Context Engineering, Tool System.

TRY NEXT

Begin with “Everything Is a Plugin: Announcement vs Source,” then choose the next note by the task in front of you.

WATCH FOR

Do not optimize for finishing the list. Explaining one trade-off with your own example matters more than opening more titles.

What this route helps you practice

Open the first note

Each chapter follows a class of real decisions. Follow the sequence, or enter at the problem you are solving today.

29notes
01Everything Is a Plugin: Announcement vs SourceMap the launch copy’s four modes, session log, and plugin ecosystem line by line onto the repo’s YAML presets and package layoutArchitecture10 min02Profile / Bundle / Patch: How Far Users Can Reshape the ProductHow the three-layer config lets users swap deep capabilities without editing sourceArchitecture11 min03Model-visible ⟺ logged: An Invariant That Crashes in Your FaceStarting from the byte-for-byte check in invariant.ts: why everything the model sees must be reconstructable from the logDeep Dive10 min04followup / steer / inject: Dual-Queue InboxBreak down enqueue, claim, and wake semantics for the next-turn and next-step queues, and contrast Claude Code’s interrupt modelInteractive10 min05What Happens After Esc: Cancel, Crash Recovery, and Re-entryOne AbortSignal per turn; write the log even on interrupt; crash, restart, and keep goingDeep Dive11 min06Goal: Provenance Is PermissionHow long-term goals are stored, who may change them—auth looks at message provenanceDesign Pattern11 min07Compaction Dual Paths & replaceGenerationTwo orthogonal paths — pressure trigger and overflow recovery — plus requiring a generation number to prove compaction actually happened before retry is allowedDeep Dive9 min08Token Accounting: Replay for Decisions, Projection for DisplayTwo meters, each its own job—compaction decisions never trust the UI numberConcept8 min09Spill: When Tool Output Is Too LargeOver-limit output is archived to disk; the model keeps a retrieval credentialHands-on10 min10Session Search & Cross-Session CitationsOld sessions are a searchable corpus; citations can carry provenanceDeep Dive9 min11Tool Execution Pipeline: Three-Stage Cascade & Monotone GuardA three-stage line from pre-execute to post-execute — Guard can only tighten, never allowArchitecture9 min12Tool Output Contract: Value Separated from DisplaySame result — what the model sees and what people see can differDesign Pattern8 min13File-Edit Engineering: Read Before WriteThe read / edit / write trio — unread files can’t be editedHands-on9 min14DSH-Only Tool Surface: terminal / lsp / jobsWhat the tools others lack each solveCase Study9 min15Approvals & Permissions: Two Knobs, One DropdownSandbox mode and approval policy are two independent knobs; presets are just common combosSecurity9 min16Sandbox: From seatbelt to the Execution Worldctx.fs and ctx.subprocess share one path namespace, so the whole execution environment can be swappedSecurity10 min17Code Mode: One Program Beats Many Tool RoundsAnnouncement calls it PTC, source calls it code mode: worker sandbox isolation, message protocol, and double bookkeepingFrontier11 min18Subagent Is a Seam: In-Process to Delegating Claude CodeA sub-Agent is a capability seam — in-process, remote, or another product can plug inArchitecture8 min19workflow / schedule / plan / todo: Orchestration PrimitivesWhat each of the four orchestration primitives owns, and why they were never merged into one monolithConcept9 min20Skill, Preset, and Self-Modificationcordis_define lets an Agent rewrite its own runtime while runningFrontier10 min21MCP & Extensions: Two Paths to External ToolsHow bridging the ecosystem standard and native extensions divide the workDeep Dive10 min22LLM Adapter Layer: Single Attempt, Explicit Retry, Dual-Stream PersistenceReasoning and text streams stored separately; retries are explicit eventsDeep Dive9 min23Testing a Nondeterministic SystemDeterministic replay, property-based testing, and a fault server built to trick LLM clientsHands-on10 min24Persistence Governance: Versions, fork Boundaries, Refuse-to-ParseHow log formats evolve, how fork boundaries are set, and prefer refusing data you can’t readArchitecture10 min25Credentials, Settings, Storage, and TelemetryUnsexy and full of traps: credentials resolved every time, secrets never land in configHands-on10 min26Multi-Entry & Typert: One Kernel, Five FacesWeb, headless, ACP, SDK, and HTTP share one kernelArchitecture9 min27Agent Notes & AGENTS.md: Discipline for Building AI with AIFour-state design notes and coding standards written for AI — your team can copy them immediatelyRecap11 min28KV Cache Is an InterfaceTreat prompt prefix stability as a compatibility promiseFrontier10 min29Finale: Five Engineering Views — What Should We Copy?Five harnesses’ design-philosophy master table, plus a minimum copy list and a scale-trap listFinale10 min