DSH Lifeboat

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DSH Lifeboat is an out-of-process recovery console for DeepSeek Harness profiles. It can still start when a profile cannot: every probe runs against a temporary DSH_HOME, and the original profile manifest and patch files stay read-only until the user explicitly applies a recovery.

What is included

• A loopback-only Web UI at 127.0.0.1 with live probe progress, evidence, report download, recovery confirmation, and one-step undo.
• A CLI mode that emits the same dsh-lifeboat/v1 JSON report without the UI.
• Config probes using dsh --profile <name> --dump-config.
• Optional runtime probes that treat a clean exit or survival through a configurable startup window as a successful boot.
• Fresh temporary homes for every probe attempt; runtime results are confirmed twice by default and mixed evidence never enables recovery.
• Delta debugging over out-of-tree bundles, including minimal multi-plugin conflict sets.
• Separate checks for profile-level and Harness-home cordis.patch.yml failures.
• Optimistic manifest hashing, timestamped backups, and atomic recovery writes.
• A bounded diagnosis queue, graceful process shutdown, GET /api/health, browser-session reconnect, and atomically persisted reports.
• A small Harness plugin that writes ~/.dsh/lifeboat/last-healthy.json only after the Loader settles. The rescue server itself never runs inside the failing Harness process.

Run from this checkout

Node.js ^22.19.0 || >=24.0.0 is required. There are no runtime dependencies.

node ./src/cli.js serve

Open the printed http://127.0.0.1:<port>/ address. The default port is 4317; use --port 0 for a random free port.

Terminal reports are stored under $DSH_HOME/lifeboat/reports. See service operation for systemd and Windows Task Scheduler guidance.

Run without the UI:

node ./src/cli.js diagnose --profile web
node ./src/cli.js diagnose --profile web --json
node ./src/cli.js diagnose --profile web --mode boot --allow-runtime-code-execution
node ./src/cli.js diagnose --profile web --mode boot --boot-confirmations 3 --allow-runtime-code-execution

When dsh is run from a Harness source checkout, use safe executable-plus-argument fields instead of a shell command string:

node ./src/cli.js diagnose \
  --command pnpm \
  --command-arg --dir \
  --command-arg /path/to/deepseek-harness \
  --command-arg dsh \
  --profile web

On PowerShell, quote any argument beginning with -- when necessary.

Install as a Harness bundle

Install the pinned v0.1.0 release directly through Harness:

dsh plugin --profile web add https://github.com/IoveCelestina/dsh-lifeboat/releases/download/v0.1.0/dsh-lifeboat-0.1.0.tgz

For a local checkout, run this from its parent directory instead:

dsh plugin --profile web add ./dsh-lifeboat

The package declares dsh.bundle through cordis.patch.yml. Installation adds the health marker to the selected profile. The rescue UI remains a standalone binary so a broken Loader cannot take it down:

pnpm --dir "$DSH_HOME/profiles/web" exec dsh-lifeboat serve

The v0.1.0 package is published as a GitHub Release asset, not on the npm registry. The release-tarball command above was exercised end to end against the current Harness CLI.

How isolation works

1. Lifeboat reads $DSH_HOME/profiles/<name>/package.json and records its SHA-256 hash.
2. Installation-owned bundles stay fixed. Bundles also present in the profile's dependencies become candidates.
3. Every probe attempt receives a new direct child named dsh-lifeboat-* under the operating-system temp directory.
4. Bounded regular profile assets are copied. Credential-bearing files and symlinked assets are skipped. Installed packages are exposed through absolute package-resolution links so pnpm's relative links remain valid in the temporary profile.
5. The full composition is probed. If it fails, Lifeboat distinguishes clean bundle failures from user-patch failures.
6. For a community-bundle failure, delta debugging tests subsets and complements until it finds a 1-minimal failing set.
7. In runtime mode, inconsistent repeated attempts stop the diagnosis as unstable-probe without offering recovery.
8. Each temporary directory is removed after all owned links are unlinked, unless --keep-artifacts was selected.

Lifeboat reports a minimal reproduced set, not moral blame. A two-bundle result means the combination failed under the selected probe; it does not prove either package is independently defective.

Recovery behavior

“Apply recovery” is deliberately unavailable until the report contains a bundle finding. When confirmed, Lifeboat:

1. re-reads the original manifest and rejects the write if its hash changed;
2. saves the exact original file under .lifeboat-backups/;
3. atomically replaces package.json, removing only the diagnosed bundles from dsh.profile.bundles;
4. keeps package dependencies installed;
5. exposes “Undo this recovery” for the same local server session.

Running a later dsh plugin package-manager command may reconcile an installed bundle back into the active list. Remove or update the actual faulty dependency after recovery.

Safety and current limitations

• The server binds only to 127.0.0.1, rejects non-loopback Host headers, sends a restrictive CSP, and requires a random per-process token for writes.
• Config mode does not mount plugin rows. Runtime mode does execute installed plugin code with the current operating-system user permissions and therefore requires an explicit acknowledgement. The temporary Home isolates configuration and runtime data; it is not an operating-system sandbox for plugin source code.
• Probe processes receive a credential-scrubbed environment. A plugin that requires an API key may therefore fail for an environmental reason; the report preserves this distinction as far as the process result allows.
• Runtime survival is a health heuristic, not proof of full application correctness. Prefer config mode for deterministic loader/configuration failures.
• Relative profile assets are copied up to 32 MiB. Links are skipped and reported, so a profile built around linked local sources may require --keep-artifacts and manual inspection.
• The current candidate classifier follows the Harness profile contract: out-of-tree bundle names are active bundles also listed in dependencies. Installation-owned bundles are never automatically disabled.
• The current release targets the dsh.profile.bundles format used by current pre-release Harness builds. It has not been validated against every historical release.

Relationship to dsh-guard

Lifeboat was implemented independently. The closest listed community project, dsh-guard, focuses on rolling snapshots and in-process rollback; its README explicitly notes that an in-process plugin cannot rescue a startup crash without an external launcher. Lifeboat focuses on an independent diagnostic service, fresh-home reproduction, minimal conflict isolation, and evidence-gated recovery. See the non-ranking comparison.

Development

npm test
npm run check
npm pack --dry-run --ignore-scripts

The project intentionally uses only Node.js built-ins so the rescue path does not acquire another dependency graph that can fail during an incident.