dsh-engineering-skills
Matt Pocock's skills — 27 engineering and
productivity agent skills (grilling, spec/ticket flows, TDD, code review, domain
modelling, handoff, …) — packaged as a DeepSeek Harness plugin bundle: one
dsh plugin add and all 27 show up in the session skill catalog and the / menu;
removing the plugin removes them cleanly.
The harness is in developer preview and iterates quickly — expect compatibility-breaking changes.
中文说明见 README.zh.md.
Screenshots
Skill suggestions in the / menu: grill-me and grill-with-docs carry the
user-only marker (the model can never auto-invoke them), while grilling is
model-invoked (it is also in the model's catalog):
slash menu
Why a plugin at all
You do not need this plugin to use the skills: DSH's filesystem provider scans
~/.agents/skills (rank 500) and <project>/.agents/skills (rank 200) by default,
and upstream's installer drops the same SKILL.md trees there — the format,
frontmatter and disable-model-invocation semantics are already identical.
The plugin adds: one-command install/uninstall managed by the profile, versioned
updates pinned to an upstream commit (UPSTREAM.json, sync --check), no writes
to the shared ~/.agents/skills, category/name filtering to keep the catalog
prompt small, and a short DSH tool-mapping note appended on load.
Install
Prerequisites
The dsh CLI must be on your PATH (npm install -g @deepseek-ai/dsh, or prefix
commands with npx @deepseek-ai/dsh). This release is verified on harness 0.2.1-rc.2.
Add the bundle
# 1. add the bundle to your web profile (pnpm-backed; the built lib/ is committed,
# so no build script runs at install time). Prefer a release tag (#v0.1.2);
# #main tracks the latest commit.
dsh plugin --profile web add "github:tianji-qingtian/dsh-engineering-skills#v0.1.2"
# 2. restart the harness with that profile — `add` only edits the profile files;
# a running instance does not hot-load the new bundle
dsh --profile web
After the restart the / menu lists all 27 skills (16 user-only + 11 dual-channel)
and the model catalog carries the 11 model-invoked ones; dsh-engineering-skills appears under
Settings → Plugins.
Local path for development:
dsh plugin --profile web add <local-checkout>/dsh-engineering-skills
Config
- id: engineering-skills
config:
categories: [productivity] # engineering | productivity (default: both)
skills: [grilling, grill-me, tdd] # explicit subset; overrides categories
appendHarnessGuide: true # append the DSH tool-mapping note on load
providerName: engineering-skills # registry provider name
A non-empty skills list overrides categories entirely; unknown categories or
skill names fail the mount instead of silently shrinking the catalog.
Mapping (upstream → DSH)
| Upstream | DSH |
|---|
SKILL.md bundle + YAML frontmatter | same format, parsed by the skill registry |
disable-model-invocation: true (16 skills) | { modelInvocable: false, userInvocable: true } — / menu only, never in the catalog or skill tool |
| default (11 model-invoked) | { modelInvocable: true, userInvocable: true } — catalog + skill tool + /name |
/name slash command | /name gesture, host injects the same <skill_content> block; no commands needed |
agents/openai.yaml | dropped (Codex UI metadata, unread by DSH) |
| referenced sub-files (25) | resourceBase: { kind: 'directory' }; the skill result carries the base directory |
Skill tool wording | rewritten by the sync script to `skill` tool |
Syncing upstream
node scripts/sync-upstream.mjs # re-fetch the pinned commit and rebuild skills/
node scripts/sync-upstream.mjs --source ../mp-skills # use an existing clone
node scripts/sync-upstream.mjs --check # CI drift gate
Both modes also verify that UPSTREAM.json version matches the version declared by
the fetched upstream commit (package.json / .claude-plugin/plugin.json), so a stale
version string cannot pass --check by being copied into the manifest.
Release flow: bump UPSTREAM.json → sync → pnpm test → tag. Only skills listed
in upstream's .claude-plugin/plugin.json ship; in-progress/ and misc/ never do.
Known limits
ask-matt needs a rewrite: it promises to read other user-invoked skills'
bodies, which DSH deliberately never exposes to the model. Recast it as
human-facing navigation ("run /x yourself").implement-spec worktrees: no first-party worktree tool; the skill must
drive git worktree itself or run serially.triage / wayfinder / to-* need an issue tracker: prefer the setup
skill's Local-markdown mode (.scratch/) where gh/glab are unavailable.improve-codebase-architecture report relies on CDN Tailwind/Mermaid;
prefer self-contained HTML offline.- Temp/output: OS temp and
open become workspace paths + present.
- Catalog cost: 11 model-invoked descriptions are resident each request; trim
with
categories.
- English bodies: add a language line to the project's
AGENTS.md for Chinese
output.
- Harness upgrades: bump the
@deepseek-ai/dsh-skill peer range with each
runtime prerelease and re-run pnpm test.
Harness compatibility
Only @deepseek-ai/dsh-skill is gated as a peer (checked at install and at
profile startup; an out-of-range bundle is skipped with skipping profile bundle …,
i.e. the plugin silently disappears after a harness upgrade). Prerelease semver
needs an explicit match: ^0.2.1-rc.2 covers 0.2.1-rc.2 and later 0.2.x
releases but not a new prerelease such as 0.2.2-rc.1, so bump the peer range on
each harness prerelease and re-run pnpm test. No build step is involved: lib/
is runnable ESM and skills/ is data.
Development
Managed with pnpm 11.28.5 (packageManager field; CI pins the same version). Other
major pnpm versions may rewrite pnpm-lock.yaml; check the lockfile diff before committing.
The contract baseline is REQUIREMENTS.md — change it first when a
service, field or config semantic moves.
pnpm install
pnpm test # 23 assertions + real registry/lifecycle + bundle/package contract
pnpm run sync:check # upstream drift + pin-version gate
test-package.mjs checks the cordis.patch.yml insert row, the npm files whitelist,
manifest-vs-tree consistency and the peer/license files; CI additionally unpacks the
packed tarball and imports it, so the published artifact is exercised, not just the repo.
License
Plugin code MIT (LICENSE); skills/ is MIT content from Matt Pocock (full text in
LICENSE-upstream) — see NOTICE and UPSTREAM.json for attribution, the exact
rewrite list and the pinned source.
