language-plugin-dsh

Pin the language of the chat and of the artifacts in DSH — terminal and web.

Two independent axes, both enforced from a system-prompt section:

Axis	Values	Meaning
chat	inherit (default), auto, off, a BCP-47 tag	the prose the agent replies with
artifacts	en-US (default), inherit, off, a BCP-47 tag	everything written into a file or to a forge

chat defaults to inherit: the reply follows the language the user writes. auto is an accepted alias for it. artifacts is pinned to en-US by default, so identifiers, comments, documentation, commit messages and PR bodies are always English whatever the reply language is. /lang opens a numbered picker, and a pick typed straight into the composer is swallowed (nothing is sent to the model).

• Plugin-only. No dsh core change, no patch, no fork. Plain Cordis services.
• Scoped. The chat rule belongs to the root agent, so a delegated child does not inherit the user-facing voice. The artifact rule is global: a child gets the artifact section, an artifact-only tail reminder, and the same write guard, with its own budget.
• Zero dependencies. Plain ESM, no build step, no network call.
• Offline guard. Optional strict mode detects an ignored chat language with a local stopword heuristic and steers one correction. No model call.
• Layered. A tail reminder rides the runtime-context snapshot, a write guard blocks artifacts that land in the wrong language, and the compaction summary and session title are pinned to the policy.

Install

git clone https://github.com/farchanjo/language-plugin-dsh.git
dsh plugin --profile tui add ./language-plugin-dsh   # terminal UI
dsh plugin --profile web add ./language-plugin-dsh   # web UI

Restart dsh afterwards. Remove with dsh plugin --profile <p> remove language-plugin-dsh.

The plugin declares the commands.dsh/v1alpha1#Command contract and the commands.invoke permission. No grants file is needed: no mediated capability and no storage are used.

Usage

/lang                      # open the picker (also: /lang status)
/lang chat pt-BR           # force the prose language by tag
/lang chat inherit         # follow the user (default; `auto` is an alias)
/lang chat off             # no chat rule
/lang artifacts en-US      # keep artifacts in English (default)
/lang artifacts inherit    # follow the chat axis instead
/lang artifacts off        # no artifact rule
/lang strict on            # correct an ignored chat language
/lang reset                # back to inherit / en-US / off

The picker lists 79 languages by number (the first ten are the most common, the rest follow alphabetically). Labels are the English names from Intl.DisplayNames; the status line carries the tag. Keys:

Key	Action
1-79	set the chat language
0	follow the user (inherit)
o	chat off
s	toggle strict
q	close the picker

The picker closes on any other message, which then goes through normally. It expires after 120 s. A language outside the list is set by tag (/lang chat eo). Language tags are canonicalized (pt-br becomes pt-BR) and validated with Intl.getCanonicalLocales; anything that is not a tag is rejected.

State lives in ~/.config/language-plugin-dsh/config.json (0700 directory, 0600 file, atomic write). The file is the runtime truth; the row config in cordis.patch.yml only seeds a fresh install.

What the section says

The chat rule carries the verbatim list — code, commands, paths, identifiers, error strings, tool output — so a forced prose language never translates a payload. The artifact rule names every artifact kind and exempts quoted user text, untouched existing files, and localization resources that follow their own locale.

An explicit request for another language in one message wins for that turn only.

Enforcement layers

Layer	Surface	Effect
Reminder	system-prompt/assemble	the policy is restated in the runtime-context snapshot, which sits at the tail of the request and replaces itself every step
Write guard	tools/pre-execute	before write/edit runs, the comments and documentation are checked; a wrong language denies the call with a retry instruction, so nothing bad lands on disk
Summarizer	own compaction engine	subclasses the stock engine, so every inherited step stays and only the directive gains the artifact language
Title	llm/stream (purpose: 'session-title')	the title follows the chat language

The summarizer row is the stock engine disabled and this plugin's subclass inserted in its place. The composition stays intact: jev-compaction keeps its own row and prunes before the summary, and every inherited behaviour — range selection, replay prefix, envelope, usage accounting — is untouched.

The write guard judges only human prose: documentation bodies and comment lines. Identifiers, strings, and data files are ignored, and so are localization resources. A file with fewer than eight words of prose is left alone. Every agent gets its own budget: at most two denials and two corrections per turn.

Limits

• Enforcement is a prompt section, re-assembled every step. It is not a post-processor: a model can still ignore it. Turn on strict if that matters.
• The strict detector scores stopword hits for Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, German and Italian. An unclear or language-neutral reply is left alone, and a turn gets at most two corrections.
• The write guard shares that detector. A language outside those six is never recognized, so an artifact target like ja-JP produces no blocks.
• The guard judges the arguments, so it cannot know whether the tool would have succeeded. A retry after a deny is always safe: nothing was written.
• The engine subclasses @deepseek-ai/dsh-compaction-basic, declared as a dependency so dsh plugin add installs it. A host upgrade can move that class; bump the pin with it.
• Exactly one engine may claim compaction. If a preset or another bundle mounts its own, disable one of the two rows: /lang keeps working, only the summary language is lost.
• Switching jev-compaction to backend mode (its ./backend entry) also mounts an engine. Keep our row disabled in that case.
• Existing files keep their wording, so converting a whole repository needs an explicit instruction.

Development

pnpm install
pnpm test        # node --test
pnpm lint        # biome check (format + lint)
pnpm lint:fix    # apply the safe fixes

ESM, no build step, no runtime dependency. Biome owns formatting (single quotes, 120 columns) and the recommended lint set.

License

MIT.