dsh-delete-chat

Delete a DSH conversation without losing it.

DeepSeek Harness only archives: the row disappears from every list, the log stays on disk forever. This plugin adds the real delete — with a safety net first. The directory is moved into ~/.dsh/session-trash, the sidebar gains a Trash page listing what is inside, and only an explicit "delete permanently", behind a confirmation modal, ever unlinks a file.

English | 中文

Why it exists

Two shipped DSH packages document the gap themselves:

"Does not delete session files — logs accumulate under root until removed externally. The seam has no delete interface." — @deepseek-ai/dsh-session-persistence-jsonl

"Removing a project keeps its folder, files and session history … while session deletion and folder removal are independent features that are not yet provided." — @deepseek-ai/dsh-workspace

"Delete workspace" only touches the list, "archive" only hides, so ~/.dsh/sessions only grows. This plugin is the scissors.

What you get

Soft delete	Session row "⋯" → Delete chat renames the directory into ~/.dsh/session-trash. Same volume, so it is instant, atomic, and copies nothing
A trash page	The sidebar's panel list gains "🗄 Trash · 3"; selecting it replaces the centre column with a page (the same kind the Plugins manager uses): filter, multi-select, restore, permanent delete, empty
A modal for every verb	Restore, delete and empty each open a confirmation naming the count, the bytes it frees and whether it is reversible. Only the confirm button touches the disk
Full row details	Size, absolute path inside the trash, last activity and deletion time (YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss)
Hard to lose by accident	The permanent verbs exist only inside the trash; every other entry point is reversible
Localized	Wording follows the host language (zh / en) live — row, modal and page all re-render on a switch
Both layouts	Per-project <root>/<project>/session-<uuid>/ and flat <root>/session-<uuid>/
CLI	--trash / --trash-list / --restore / --purge --yes / --empty --yes, usable without the GUI
Self-hosted index	Ships a format-1 market index — add it as an index source for a private market

Screenshots

  

Install

In DSH, just ask:

Install https://github.com/abangbang/dsh-delete-chat

Chinese works too: 帮我安装 https://github.com/abangbang/dsh-delete-chat

Restart DSH afterwards. The plugin tree — and the client bundle, which is served with immutable cache headers — are both composed at boot, so a page refresh is not enough.

Usage

Delete

Session row → "⋯" → Delete chat → confirm. The row leaves the list, running work stops, and the directory moves into the trash:

Status   moved to trash
Size     274.4 KB

Nothing is lost: this is a rename, and it stays reversible until you say otherwise.

The trash

The sidebar's panel list (the nav above the workspaces, aria-label="全局面板") gains a 🗄 Trash · 3 row:

• the count follows the row's own text colour, is hidden at zero, shows 99+ above that, and moves the moment a delete lands;
• collapsed to the 56px rail it drops the name, keeping icon and count;
• selecting it opens a page listing every trashed conversation:

alpha conversation
  Size           2.0 KB
  Location       ~/.dsh/session-trash/--proj--/session-…
  Last activity  2026-10-27 17:08:07   ← the log's mtime; rename keeps it
  Deleted        2026-10-29 09:02:03

On that page:

• filter by title, path or project;
• select one row or all of them — the footer counts the selection;
• Restore moves the directories back, re-accounts them and unarchives them;
• Delete permanently and Empty trash live only here, and each asks first: a modal naming the count, the bytes it frees and that it cannot be undone.

The restore confirmation is amber; only the deleting ones are red. Colour is meaning here, not decoration.

How it works

Moving a conversation to the trash

Step	Action	Why this order
1	archiveSession(id, { stopActivity: true })	Hides the row everywhere immediately, stops a running turn, and ArchivedSessionGate refuses later wakes
2	rename <sessions-root>/…/session-<uuid>/ → <home>/session-trash/<project>/session-<uuid>/	Same volume, so the move is instant and atomic; a root on another volume falls back to copy + remove (EXDEV)
3	Rewrite storages/workspace.json	Drops the id from sessionIds so the sidebar row cannot come back; .bak-<stamp> kept
4	Update <home>/session-trash/index.json	Keeps title, cwd, size, last activity and deletion time without decoding a single zstd frame

The trash layout

~/.dsh/
├── sessions/                      # live sessions
│   └── <project>/session-<uuid>/
└── session-trash/                 # everything you deleted
    ├── index.json                 # titles, cwd, sizes, timestamps
    └── <project>/session-<uuid>/  # the directory, byte for byte

The directory tree is the truth: a directory the manifest does not know is listed with its id as the title, and a manifest row whose directory vanished is reported as missing instead of being shown.

Restore reverses steps 2–3 and asks the live registry to re-project the row (insertSessionBefore) when it can. Permanent deletion — only ever reachable from the trash — unlinks the directory, forgets the manifest row and clears the projection cache.

When it fails

What failed	What you see	What is actually true
The host call itself	dialog phase error, red box	Nothing was written
The move refused (on Windows: a directory another process holds)	dialog error carrying EBUSY/EPERM	The archive already ran; the directory is still in the sessions root, so unarchive it and it is back
workspace.json rewrite refused after a good move	the trash row exists, the sidebar row may linger	Files are safe in the trash; restore them, or clear the stale reference by hand
A purge cannot unlink	the page lists path + reason, and N failed	The other selections were deleted; the failing one is still listed
Restore cannot move back	N failed with the path	The directory is still in the trash; nothing was half-moved

Recovery, in the order to try it:

1. Restore — anything in the trash comes back with one click; that is the whole point.
2. Retry — the dialog and the page are idempotent: run them again after fixing the cause (close the handle, quit the sync client).
3. CLI fallback — quit DSH first; the lock that blocks a directory is usually the host's own handle. dsh-delete-chat --trash | --restore | --purge --yes.
4. Roll back the store — every rewrite leaves workspace.json.bak-<stamp> next to it.

Known limitations

• The trash is not the OS recycle bin. It lives at <DSH home>/session-trash; deleting that directory by hand is a permanent delete that bypasses every confirmation.
• Restore may need a restart. The live row comes back immediately when the workspace registry exposes insertSessionBefore; without it the directory is restored and the row reappears on the next boot.
• No cascade: subagent and forked child sessions survive on their own, and their parent_session dangles.
• Attachments untouched: ~/.dsh/attachments/v1/objects is content-addressed and shared, so neither trashing nor purging one session deletes objects other sessions still reference.
• In-memory object lingers: the sessions service exposes only create/get/list, so a trashed session's object stays until restart. It runs no model step while archived.

License

MIT. Listing ≠ endorsement: this is third-party code; install only from sources you trust.