dsh-edit-panel

Live writing of text files for DeepSeek Harness (DSH): the AI writes a text or Markdown file section by section into an editor in the right sidebar, and you can type in the same file at the same time.

Maintenance: best-effort. Issues may go unanswered; forks are welcome.

What it adds

• Five tools for the model, in every conversation:
  • edit_begin(path, outline, title?) creates the file with its headings and opens the panel;
  • edit_write_section(section, content) writes one section, saved to disk at once;
  • edit_status() says what is written, what you changed, and what to do next;
  • edit_finish() ends the draft;
  • edit_open(path) shows an existing file in the panel without changing it.
• The panel (a right-sidebar tab, Live writing): each section in a small word-processor editor (bold, italic, headings, lists, quotes, links, undo; read and written as Markdown). What you type is saved after a short pause, and the AI cannot overwrite a section while you are typing in it.
• Proposals instead of overwrites: when the AI rewrites a section that already has text, the file does not change; the panel shows its proposal word by word (added in green, removed struck in red), and you keep or refuse each change, or all of them.
• Existing files are safe: an existing file is drafted in <file>.draft and replaces the original only when you press Finish (the original is copied to the backup folder first); Cancel discards the draft. A file opened with edit_open is edited in place, after a backup copy.
• Ask the AI about a passage: select text, then the ✦ Ask the AI pill (or Ctrl+K) puts the passage, with its section, in the message box, with quick actions (shorten, rephrase, fix, translate).
• Documents of the conversation: a drawer above the message box lists the files opened in this conversation; a click reopens one. A click on a text file link [name](/path/file.md) in the conversation opens it in the panel.
• Your instructions per section and your decisions are given back to the model as runtime context, so they survive compaction.

Files: .md, .markdown, .txt, .text, .tex, .org, .rst, .qmd, .rmd, inside your home folder and not in a hidden folder. In Markdown files, sections are the ## headings.

The interface is in English, and in French when DSH's language is French (tables en and fr at the top of client.js).

Install

dsh plugin --profile web add github:MathieuPortmann/dsh-edit-panel

Restart the profile afterwards. Requires Node ^22.19.0 || >=24 and DSH >=0.2.0-rc.2 <0.3.0 (see Compatibility). Once the package is on npm, dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-edit-panel works too.

Configuration

Options of the edit-panel row:

Option	Default	Meaning
dataDir	<DSH_HOME>/edit-panel	state of the drafts (one JSON per conversation) and the document list
backupDir	<DSH_HOME>/backups/edit-panel	copies of files before they are replaced or opened
announce	true	one line in every conversation telling the model that text files are written through the panel; set false to use the tools only when asked

How it works

• lib/draft.js holds the drafts: it renders the file from its sections, reads it back to see what you changed (a fingerprint per section), keeps proposals waiting, locks a section for 30 s while you type, and replaces or restores files with backups. lib/docs.js keeps the document list. Both are pure Node.js and covered by tests/.
• index.js (host side) registers the tools, sends the draft state as runtime context, and serves the panel through an RPC channel at /edit-api/<method>, behind DSH's own connection check.
• client.js (page side) draws the tab, the drawer and the editors. The editor itself (web/editor.js) is a bundle of ProseMirror and markdown-it built from web-src/editor.js; the page receives it from the host and loads it once.

Compatibility

Component	Supported
Node.js	^22.19.0 || >=24.0.0 (engines.node)
DSH	>=0.2.0-rc.2 <0.3.0; declared as optional peerDependencies on @deepseek-ai/dsh-tools and @deepseek-ai/schemastery, the only DSH packages the host side imports
Platform	Linux (tested); pure JavaScript, no native addon
Page	DSH's web UI with the right sidebar; the drawer finds the message box by its editable area and may need an update when the page changes

Tested with DSH 0.2.0-rc.2 on Node 22.23 (see Verification).

Permissions and external services

Everything the plugin can touch, and what happens when it fails:

Capability	Where	Used for	If it fails
Files	lib/draft.js, lib/docs.js	writes the text files the model drafts and the files you open in the panel, only inside your home folder, never in hidden folders, only the text extensions above; <file>.draft working copies; backup copies in backupDir; state in dataDir	the tool or the panel shows the error; nothing is written
Network	none	nothing leaves the computer	n/a
Commands	none	no child process, no shell	n/a
Tools for the model	index.js	edit_open, edit_begin, edit_write_section, edit_status, edit_finish (see above)	an error text is returned to the model
HTTP route	index.js (ctx.webServer.register)	POST /edit-api/<method> for the panel, behind ctx.connection.admit() (DSH's Host/Origin fence and token); JSON bodies only, limited to 1 MiB	non-admitted requests get 401/403; other errors are returned in the RPC envelope
Dynamic module loading	index.js (importFromDsh)	loads @deepseek-ai/dsh-tools and @deepseek-ai/schemastery from the DSH installation that runs the plugin. Nothing is downloaded	the plugin fails to load
Code evaluation in the page	client.js (loadLib)	the editor bundle, read by the host from this package's web/editor.js, is turned into code with new Function once (or, under a strict content policy, loaded as a blob script). No other text is ever evaluated, and nothing comes from the network	the panel shows "Editor unavailable" and the sections as plain text
Interface	client.js	a right-sidebar tab, a drawer above the message box, a click handler on text file links of the conversation, the font choice saved in the browser's localStorage; registers a French dictionary and language entry with DSH's locale service	no panel

Verification

Checked on a disposable profile (DSH_HOME pointing at a temporary folder, so the real profile is never touched):

npm pack
dsh plugin --profile t add file:$PWD/dsh-edit-panel-0.1.0.tgz   # install
dsh t --port 3095 --no-open                                      # start: plugin loads, no error
dsh plugin --profile t remove dsh-edit-panel                      # uninstall

npm test runs 9 standalone tests (drafts: new and existing files, the user's edits, locks, proposals kept, merged or refused, open in place, cancel, duplicate headings, path rules; the document list) with no DSH installation needed.

web/editor.js is reproducible: cd web-src && npm ci && npm run build rebuilds it byte for byte with the versions pinned in web-src/package-lock.json (esbuild 0.28.2). The bundled libraries and their licenses are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Develop

npm test
cd web-src && npm ci && npm run build   # after changing web-src/editor.js

License

MIT for this plugin. The bundled libraries keep their own licenses (MIT, and BSD-2-Clause for entities), see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.