dsh-thinking-levels

Per-round thinking-level (reasoning_effort) control for DeepSeek Harness (dsh): pick Auto (a mask) in the session model selector and the plugin schedules low / high / max from the recent tool-call history before submitting the API effort — or fix a wire level (off / low / high / max) manually. Cheap tool rounds stay cheap; heavy work never starves.

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In a multi-step tool chain, the model re-thinks before every tool call — and that thinking dominates the wall-clock time (a 50-step agent task can spend minutes reasoning between tools). dsh-thinking-levels plugs into the agent/request waterfall that dsh re-resolves for every step (registered with prepend so the session model-selection assembly cannot overwrite its decision) and injects a thinking level into the next model request.

Levels

Level	Meaning	Where
off	thinking disabled (manual only — never auto-picked)	model selector / default level
low	manual pick for simple chat tasks (cheap rounds stay cheap)	model selector / default level
high	the official default effort	model selector / default level
max	heavy work	model selector / default level
auto	mask: schedule per step from the recent tool-call history, resolved to a wire level before submission	model selector (injected by the plugin) / default level

Wire-level facts (verified against the official DeepSeek docs and dsh's llm-deepseek adapter): low maps 1:1 on deepseek-v4-flash / v4-pro, while medium / xhigh collapse onto high. The adapter accepts off | low | high | max and rejects anything else with UNSUPPORTED_REASONING_EFFORT — auto is the plugin's mask layer, never sent to the API, always resolved to a concrete wire level before injection.

Model-selector Auto

The session model selector (next to the model) now offers Auto after Off / Low / High / Max (injected into the model-directory metadata by the plugin):

Model-selector pick	Behavior
Auto	plugin schedules via tool history + the upgrade/downgrade toggles, resolves to low / high / max before submission
off / low / high / max	manual choice wins — plugin does not intervene
unset	the plugin's default level applies (below)

Auto scheduler

The hub is high (the official default). auto schedules between low / high / max; it never picks off.

Recent tool calls	Level
none (fresh prompt, pure chat)	low
≥75% simple tools, small args, downgrades allowed	low
mixed / heavy tools	high
very heavy payloads, upgrades allowed	max

The scheduling policy is the same source as dsh-tool-turbo (same simple-tool whitelist / payload thresholds / 75% ratio rule).

Install

# 1. install the plugin into a profile from npm (web shown; any profile works)
#    (the web profile is a pnpm workspace root, so -w is required)
dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-thinking-levels -w
#    GitHub alternative:
#    dsh plugin --profile web add https://github.com/drscrewdriver/dsh-thinking-levels.git -w
#    local-path alternative (no network needed):
#    dsh plugin --profile web add /absolute/path/to/dsh-thinking-levels

# 2. restart dsh web (a running instance does not hot-load new bundle layers)
dsh web

Note: the dsh runtime uses pnpm 11, whose minimumReleaseAge supply-chain policy may block a freshly published version with ERR_PNPM_MINIMUM_RELEASE_AGE_VIOLATION — add the version to minimumReleaseAgeExclude in ~/.dsh/profiles/web/pnpm-workspace.yaml to lift the cooling period.

Manual link: registration (alternative to dsh plugin add):

#    ~/.dsh/profiles/web/package.json dependencies:
#      "dsh-thinking-levels": "link:<absolute path to dsh-thinking-levels>"
#    ~/.dsh/profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml:
#      - insert:
#          - id: thinking-levels
#            name: dsh-thinking-levels
cd ~/.dsh/profiles/web && pnpm install && dsh web

Configuration

Two surfaces share one schema:

• Assembly — the plugin row's config: in the profile composition (e.g. cordis.yml):

  config:
    level: auto            # off | low | high | max | auto — the default level when the session picks nothing
    allowDowngrade: true   # let the scheduler drop below `high`
    allowUpgrade: false    # forbid the scheduler lifting to `max`
  

• Runtime — the dsh-settings namespace thinking-levels (level, allowDowngrade, allowUpgrade, enabled): changes apply to the next model request, no restart needed. A visual editor is available under Settings → Plugins → configurable plugins.

Defaults: { enabled: true, level: 'auto', allowDowngrade: true, allowUpgrade: false }.

Semantics: the model-selector pick outranks the plugin's default level. Pick auto (mask) → plugin schedules; pick off/low/high/max → applied directly; pick nothing → the plugin's level default is used. allowDowngrade / allowUpgrade constrain auto scheduling only.

Dependency note

The host half does not value-depend on @deepseek-ai/dsh-settings (settings registration goes through the cordis settings service provided by the dsh runtime) — no need to install official packages into the profile manually. dependencies is just @deepseek-ai/schemastery (installed automatically with the package).

Development

npm run lint        # eslint (typescript-eslint flat config)
npm run typecheck   # tsc --noEmit
npm test            # vitest — 21 tests

Test coverage: level policy (manual pass-through, auto scheduler, validation, simple-tool boundary), session-event parsing (guards, window cap, malformed records), and the config schema (defaults lockstep, out-of-band rejection).

License

MIT