Side Conversation

A DeepSeek Harness plugin that opens a native side conversation next to the current conversation.

Community plugin. This package is not an official DeepSeek plugin and is not affiliated with DeepSeek. Official bundles ship with the Harness.

The side conversation is a real forked session: it inherits the parent's completed history, runs with the normal conversation UI and tools, and receives a live snapshot of the parent on every request. It can relay a request or conclusion back to the parent, and it reports its own token and cache usage.

Features

• Native conversation surface — the side chat uses the host's own chat view, composer, model selector, reasoning effort, permission picker, attachments, commands, and stop controls.
• Forked baseline — one side session per parent conversation and completed turn boundary. Reopening before the parent advances resumes the same side session; after the parent completes a new turn, a fresh fork is created from the new boundary.
• Live parent context — every request includes the parent's current state: running/idle status, in-flight reasoning and response excerpts, tool calls in flight or awaiting results, and a recent-message tail.
• Conversation boundary — inherited history is reference material. The side agent is instructed not to continue the parent task or mutate the workspace unless explicitly asked.
• Tool guard — subagent, teammate, goal, workflow, and loop tools stay in the tool schema but are rejected inside a side conversation.
• Relay — the side agent can deliver a user-requested message to the parent conversation through the send_to_main_conversation tool.
• Usage stats — a badge shows the last request and cumulative token/cache usage; the read_main_conversation tool lets the agent request a larger parent snapshot.

Requirements

• DeepSeek Harness 0.2.1-rc.1 or newer on the 0.2.1 line (engines.dsh).
• Node.js 22.19 or newer.

Installation

In DSH Desktop, open Settings → Plugins, search for dsh-side-conversation, and install it. The plugin manager links or installs the bundle into the active profile. The npm package is published as dsh-side-conversation.

From a terminal with the DSH CLI:

dsh plugin --profile <profile> add dsh-side-conversation

From a local checkout:

dsh plugin --profile <profile> add /path/to/dsh-side-conversation

Reload the Web UI after installation if the plugin list does not refresh itself.

If the package is not on npm yet, install from the repository or the release tarball:

dsh plugin --profile <profile> add github:vaniawang/dsh-side-conversation
# or
dsh plugin --profile <profile> add ./dsh-side-conversation-0.1.0.tgz

Usage

1. Open a conversation and click the side-conversation button in the header utilities.
2. Ask questions about the parent conversation, request analysis, or have a separate discussion.
3. To send a result back, ask the side agent to send it to the parent conversation; it uses the relay tool.
4. The badge in the top-right corner of the side panel shows the last request's input tokens and cache hit rate.

How It Works

The host half watches the parent conversation and the side agents:

• POST /dsh-side-conversation/open creates or resumes a side session for the parent's latest completed turn boundary.
• GET /dsh-side-conversation/stats returns token, cache, and context usage for a live side session.
• GET /dsh-side-conversation/health reports the host and client build.

The side session is an ordinary session with its own agent, so it does not append subagent notices to the parent. Parent state is injected through a dynamic runtime context; the boundary and instructions are registered as per-agent prompt sections.

Compatibility

The plugin targets the 0.2.1 release line and is tested against 0.2.1-rc.3. It uses only public Harness extension points (Web routes, agent tools, prompt sections, session API, and client slots).

Privacy

The plugin makes no network requests of its own. Model requests go through the Harness's configured provider, and the side session transcript includes context inherited from the parent conversation. Files in the parent conversation are not copied; the side agent can read them through normal tools when needed.

Development

npm run check
npm run pack:check
npm pack

npm run check runs node --check on both halves plus the package metadata validator in scripts/validate.mjs. The published package contains the host half, the client half, the bundle patch, locale metadata, and the icon. There is no build step.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the local checks and commit conventions. The release process is documented in PUBLISHING.md.

Security

Report vulnerabilities privately through GitHub security advisories. See SECURITY.md.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.