If you are new to DeepSeek Harness (DSH), the fastest way to understand plugins is: DSH is the engine, plugins are the add-ons. The engine runs coding agents on your machine; each plugin bolts a new capability onto it — a tool, a skill, vision, a terminal, a sidebar, a marketplace.
What DSH is, in one paragraph
DeepSeek Harness is a local, plugin-based framework for running coding agents. You talk to it through a web UI, a terminal UI, or an API; it manages the agent loop — model calls, tool execution, file changes, sessions, memory — on your own machine. "Everything is a plugin" is its design principle: models, tools, sessions, storage, even the UI itself are plugins.
What a plugin actually is
A plugin is a small package that extends DSH. It can be a GitHub repository (github:owner/repo) or an npm package (@scope/name). Concretely, plugins add things like:
- Tools — new actions the agent can take: web search, screenshots, Git operations.
- Skills — packaged instructions and workflows the agent can follow.
- Vision — letting a text-only model "see" images (a popular plugin category).
- UI — panels, sidebars, terminals, settings sections inside the DSH web app.
- Integrations — proxy routes, storage backends, provider bridges.
A plugin is not a "prompt" or a config file — it is code that runs with your machine's permissions, which is exactly why you should check a plugin's source before installing it.
What plugins are popular in the DSH ecosystem
The ecosystem is young but already has clear shapes. A few examples from this directory's editor's picks:
- dsh-TUI — a Claude Code-style terminal interface for DSH.
- DeepSeek Harness Desktop — a standalone desktop client for Windows and macOS.
- ModLens — one of the first vision plugins, letting DSH see images.
- @dshwork/llm-provider-proxy — routes model requests through a proxy per provider.
- dsh-crew — dispatches DSH work from Claude Code / Codex.
How to install one
Installation is one command and a restart — see our beginner install guide for the full walkthrough. In short:
dsh plugin --profile web add github:owner/repo
Then restart DSH and the plugin's UI (if any) appears in the web app.
Where to find trustworthy plugins
Because plugins run code with your permissions, "where you find them" matters. This directory indexes public dsh-plugin repositories and verifies facts about each one: the source repository, license, maintenance status, and install command. Editor's picks are a small set that a human actually reviewed — stars measure hype, not quality, so the picks are worth starting from.
The ecosystem in one line
Plugins are how DSH grows from a harness into your harness. Find one you trust, install it in one command, and every new plugin makes the agent do something it couldn't before.