dsh-preset-categorizer

Categorize plugins, MCP servers and skills into DeepSeek Harness agent presets.

DSH ships a fixed set of hand-written agent presets. This plugin reads what is actually installed, groups the capabilities into categories, and registers one preset per category with the host's own preset registry — so a category becomes a first-class entry in the GUI's preset picker.

It recognises all three kinds of capability, not just skills:

Kind	What it sees	How it is scoped into a preset
plugin	loader entries backed by a package (dsh-ffmpeg, dsh-image-gen)	a plugin row
MCP	loader entries backed by @deepseek-ai/dsh-mcp-client	an MCP row, with the server's own config
skill	the skill directories under ~/.agents/skills*	a skill-provider row for a skill root

---

Why

A capability that lives in a profile's bundles is mounted into every session, in every preset. That is right for the harness's own machinery and wrong for everything else: a plugin that adds six tools costs every session six tools' worth of schema, whether or not the session will ever use them.

The built-in presets solve this by hand — Creative carries drawio, Blender and FigCraft; Office carries GenOffice; Media carries ffmpeg and Remotion. That works until the set of installed capabilities changes, and then the hand-written lists drift.

This plugin derives the same thing from the machine.

---

Install

dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-preset-categorizer

Or from a checkout:

dsh plugin --profile web add "link:/path/to/dsh-preset-categorizer"

Mount it inside a preset, not in bundles. It adds no tools, but it does run at boot and it adds presets to the picker, so it should only be present in the sessions that want it:

# ~/.dsh/profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml, inside the Creative preset
- id: preset-categorizer
  name: dsh-preset-categorizer
  config: {}
  # The loader reads `inject` from the ENTRY ROW, not from the module's
  # exports. Without it, ctx.agentPresets throws "cannot get property
  # agentPresets without inject".
  inject:
    - loader
    - agentPresets

---

How it behaves

Three rules, in the order they matter:

1. It only adds. Every preset it creates has an id starting with cat-. If the host already has a preset with that id, it is skipped and reported. It never edits, replaces or removes an existing preset, and it never touches the profile's package.json.
2. It never moves. The plugin reports what belongs where; it does not unmount a capability from the host composition. Moving one is a decision with a cost — a plugin in bundles is also the one whose web UI loads — so it stays with the human.
3. It adds no tools. A categorizer that carried its own schemas would spend the very budget it exists to protect.

A missing package drops the row, not the preset

A preset that names a package the profile does not have mounts broken and shows up red in the picker. So the categorizer reads the profile's package.json first and drops such rows:

cat-media → [ffmpeg, remotion-skills]        in a profile with both
cat-media → [remotion-skills]                 in a profile without dsh-ffmpeg

Skills are scoped by root, not individually

A skill provider mounts a directory, and the skills on a machine usually live in shared roots. So "genoffice but not mineru" is not expressible as a preset — a category can only say "mount this root". Two categories claiming the same root would mount the same provider twice, so the first wins and the second is reported.

---

Verify

The plugin writes its own report, including the host's own roster with a broken flag per preset:

cat ~/.dsh/preset-categorizer-report.json

{
  "report": {
    "registered": 5,
    "capabilities": 209,
    "plugins": 194,
    "mcps": 5,
    "skills": 15
  },
  "roster": [
    { "id": "cat-docs", "name": "Documents (office / pdf)" },
    { "id": "cat-web", "name": "Browser (playwright)" }
  ]
}

The category rules have unit tests:

node test.mjs

---

Configuration

The categories live in lib/categories.js as plain data. Each one declares what it matches and what its preset carries:

{
  id: 'cat-web',
  kind: 'mcp',
  preset: {
    id: 'cat-web',
    name: 'Browser (playwright)',
    order: 42,
    mcpRows: [{ id: 'mcp-playwright', name: MCP_CLIENT, config: { /* ... */ } }],
    skillRoot: null,
  },
  include: ['mcp-playwright'],
  exclude: [],
}

• include / exclude — glob patterns (*, ?) matched against the capability's id, name and package. exclude wins.
• mcpRows — literal loader rows. An MCP server is mounted by config (serverName, transport, command/url), which cannot be derived from a package name.
• skillRoot — an absolute path to a skill directory to mount.

The first matching category wins, so the order of the list is meaningful.

---

Safety

• No network. The plugin makes no outbound request of any kind.
• No subprocess. No exec, no spawn, no eval.
• Reads only: the skill directories under ~/.agents/skills* and the profile's package.json.
• Writes one file: ~/.dsh/preset-categorizer-report.json, containing names and counts only — no absolute paths, no credentials.
• Touches nothing else. No profile manifest, no patch file, no existing preset.

---

License

MIT — see LICENSE.