Better Workspace File Manager

A file manager for the DeepSeek Harness (DSH) Web Files tab and the file preview panel. It adds the everyday file operations the shipped tree leaves out — upload, multi-select, download as a ZIP, new folder, delete, drag-to-move, drag-to-chat, and in-place text editing — without modifying the shipped Files tab's DOM.

Features

Files tab

• Upload by button, drag-and-drop from the computer, or a dropped folder (recreated recursively, keeping both copies on a name clash).
• Multi-select with click, ⌘/Ctrl-click, Shift-click, or a marquee drag over empty tree space.
• Download one file, several selected items, or a whole folder as a ZIP. Archives are streamed, so large folders are not held in memory.
• New folder from the right-click menu, with keep-both naming for folders created on your behalf.
• Delete files and folders after a confirmation dialog. Directories are removed with everything inside them.
• Drag to move rows onto a folder. A name already taken at the destination becomes name (1).ext, never an overwrite.
• Drag workspace rows into a conversation to add @path chips, or image attachments for PNG/JPEG/WebP/GIF.

File preview

• Download in the preview's opening menu, next to the shipped Open / Show location actions.
• Edit text files in place for the text, code, and Markdown viewers. The editor keeps the file's line endings (LF/CRLF) and byte-order mark, and saves through a version guard: if the agent or another editor changed the file meanwhile, the save reports a conflict instead of overwriting it.
• Save manually with the Save button (or ⌘/Ctrl-S), or turn on auto-save every 5 seconds in Settings.

Settings

The plugin contributes a Text editing → Auto-save row to the Plugins settings page. The choice is stored by the DSH Settings service, not in browser storage.

Requirements

• DSH Web profile, version 0.2.1-rc.3 or newer. Verified against:
  • 0.2.1-rc.3
  • 0.2.1-rc.5
  • 0.2.2-rc.1
• A Host-local filesystem backend (fs-local / fs-sandbox), which is what Web profiles mount.
• Node.js 20.15+ on the Host (the plugin uses the built-in Web Streams bridge; DSH itself may require a newer Node).

Install

From the DSH Plugins page

Open Plugins in the sidebar, find Better Workspace File Manager, and install or enable it. The page adds the package to the current profile and enables its bundle.

From the profile manifest

Install the package in the profile and add it to the ordered bundle list:

cd ~/.dsh/profiles/web
pnpm add dsh-better-workspace-file-manager

{
  "dependencies": {
    "dsh-better-workspace-file-manager": "^1.3.0"
  },
  "dsh": {
    "profile": {
      "bundles": [
        "@deepseek-ai/dsh-base",
        "@deepseek-ai/dsh-web-app",
        "dsh-better-workspace-file-manager"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Restart DSH (or let a live profile recompose) after changing the profile.

Usage

Selecting and acting on rows

Gesture	Result
Click a row	Selects it, then opens or toggles the row as usual
⌘/Ctrl-click	Adds or removes that row from the selection
Shift-click	Selects the range from the last anchor
Drag from empty tree space, or Alt-drag anywhere	Draws a selection box
Right-click a row or empty tree space	Opens the file menu
Drag rows onto a folder	Moves them there
Drag rows onto the composer	Adds file/folder references or image attachments
Escape	Clears the selection, or cancels an active box/drag

Right-click menu

The menu adapts to what was clicked:

• Files — Download, Delete (and, on DSH 0.2.1, the plugin's own menu).
• Folders — Download as ZIP, New folder, Delete.
• Several selected items — Download N items as ZIP, Delete N items.
• Empty tree space — New folder in the folder under the pointer.

Editing text

1. Open a text, code, or Markdown file in the preview panel.
2. Press Edit in the preview header.
3. Change the text. Press Save (manual mode) or wait for the 5-second auto-save (Settings).
4. Press Done to leave the editor. Unsaved manual edits ask before closing.

Edits are limited to the Session workspace. A preview outside the workspace stays read-only.

Compatibility notes

DSH 0.2.2 introduced a shared right-click menu (@deepseek-ai/dsh-client-ui-context-menu) and shipped file actions. The plugin detects that service at runtime:

• On 0.2.2+, rows use the shared menu. The plugin contributes Download as ZIP / Download N items, New folder, and Delete to it. A single file's Download stays with the shipped file-actions plugin, so there is no duplicate entry. The plugin's own overlay is still used for right-clicking empty tree space.
• On 0.2.1, where the shared menu does not exist, the plugin keeps its own right-click menu and all of its actions.

The integration is discovered through the contextMenus service; the plugin does not declare a hard dependency on the 0.2.2-only client packages, so the same build loads on 0.2.1 and 0.2.2.

How it works

• Host half (index.js) registers authenticated Connection Fetch routes under /api/better-workspace-files. Every path resolves through ctx.fs.resolve + ctx.fs.contains, so symlinks that leave the workspace are refused. Moves and deletes act on the entry itself, not on what a symlink points at.
• Browser half (client.js) is one prebuilt client module. It reads the shipped Files tree through its stable data-files-* attributes and renders all of its own UI from its own slot entries. It never mutates the shipped tab's rows.
• Downloads are split into a validation step (POST selection / file-ticket) that returns a short-lived ticket, then a plain GET download?ticket that the browser's download manager can follow. ZIPs are produced by a streaming writer that uses data descriptors and only emits ZIP64 fields when a size or offset needs them.
• Text saves go through ctx.fs.writeText with replaceIfVersion, so they are atomic, keep the file's permissions, and fail as stale instead of overwriting a concurrent change.

Host routes

All routes are registered through ctx.connection.fetch.register.

Method	Path	Purpose
POST	/upload?sessionId&dir&name	Stream a file into a folder; never overwrites
POST	/mkdir	Create one folder (sessionId, dir, name, optional unique=1)
POST	/move	Move items into a folder (sessionId, dir, repeated path)
POST	/delete	Permanently remove items (sessionId, repeated path)
POST	/selection	Validate a tree selection and return { ticket }
POST	/file-ticket	Return a ticket for one previewed file
GET	/download?ticket	Stream one file or a ZIP of the ticket's items
GET	/text?sessionId&path	Read one text file as { text, version }
POST	/save?sessionId&path&version	Replace a text file while its version is unchanged

Errors are returned as { error, message }, where error is a stable code (not-found, outside-workspace, exists, stale, too-large, …) that the browser localizes.

Development

There is no build step: index.js and client.js are shipped as-is. Link the checkout into a profile:

cd ~/.dsh/profiles/web
pnpm add link:/absolute/path/to/dsh-better-workspace-file-manager

Then add dsh-better-workspace-file-manager to dsh.profile.bundles and restart DSH. With profile HMR enabled, a client change reloads the browser module; otherwise restart the profile.

Quick syntax check:

node --check index.js
node --check client.js

Locale metadata lives in locale/en.json and locale/zh.json; the in-app dictionaries are inline in client.js.

Release

npm pack --dry-run     # inspect the published file list
npm publish --registry=https://registry.npmjs.org
gh release create v1.3.0 --title v1.3.0 --generate-notes

Only index.js, client.js, cordis.patch.yml, locale/*.json, icon.svg, the README, and the LICENSE file are published.

Known limitations

• The Files tab exposes no selection, context-menu, or drag API. The plugin layers these on with window-level event delegation keyed on the tab's data-files-* attributes. If a future DSH release renames those attributes, the extras go inert and the shipped tab keeps working.
• Dragging workspace files into a conversation reuses the composer's file intake. Image drops bypass the composer's pre-send image count/size checks; the send then reports those limits as it does for any other oversized attachment.
• Byte I/O goes through node:fs on the Host's process path because the fs service has no streaming byte read, binary write, rename, or removal. This assumes a Host-local backend.
• Text editing loads files up to 32 MiB, matching the preview's complete-file read cap.
• The plugin does not watch the workspace itself; it asks the Files tab to re-list through the tab's own reload control after its own mutations.

License

MIT © 2026 Arrosin. See LICENSE.