DSH Side Ask (Side Branch)
English | 简体中文
Select text in the main session, and a read-only branch session will pop up in the right sidebar. It inherits the existing context of the main session, streams its answers token-by-token, and its responses never pollute the model context of the main session.
Core Scenario: Asking follow-up questions, looking up terms, or exploring ideas based on the current conversation without interrupting the flow of the main session.
- Package Name (Implementation):
dsh-side-branch
- UI Name (Display): Side Ask
- Prerequisites: Node.js ≥ 20, and
pnpm installed in the local PATH.
- Verified DSH Version:
0.1.5-rc.2 and 0.1.7-rc.2
The Side Ask entry in the right sidebar guide
Selection Entry
Panel Answering
💡 Why Build This? (Motivation)
Before developing this project (Sep 2026), I surveyed 14 side-chat/bubble plugins in the DSH ecosystem and found that none of them could simultaneously meet all the following hard requirements:
- True Context Inheritance (not just a truncated summary).
- Support for Multi-turn Follow-ups within the same branch (not a one-off bubble).
- Token-by-Token Streaming (including reasoning processes).
- Lightweight & Stable (using only official public APIs, no bloated dependencies).
- Execution-Layer Read-Only, strictly preserving the prefix cache.
The closest alternatives all had compromises: @michengai/dsh-btw was one-off and lacked streaming; dsh-side-chat-plus didn't inherit history by default; dsh-sidenote was feature-rich but extremely heavy (requiring a 14.7 MB dependency); @lukeknow0/dsh-side-chat had excellent architecture but was unmaintained.
The biggest divergence lies in how "read-only" is implemented: similar plugins universally use toolFilter to forcefully remove tools from the prompt. However, this causes the branch's prompt prefix to diverge from the main session, rendering the parent session's accumulated prefix cache completely invalid.
This project strictly chooses to enforce read-only at the execution layer. Thus, the branch's prompt prefix remains byte-identical to the main session, continuing to enjoy an extremely high prefix cache hit rate (empirically 97%–98%).
✨ Core Features
- True Branch, Zero Pollution: The host strictly prevents writing anything back to the parent session. The Side Ask Q&A will not appear in the main session's model context.
- Follows the Main Session, Every Turn: Every follow-up rebuilds the branch from the main session's latest settled content — a fresh seed plus a replay of the branch's own earlier questions and answers — so the branch always sees the main session as it is now without losing anything it was asked before. Reusing the main session's model keeps hitting the existing prefix cache, avoiding recalculation.
- Execution-Layer Read-Only Isolation: Security policies do not rely on prompts. Forced takeover by the underlying
ctx.tools.guard whitelists only six query tools without side effects (read, glob, grep, web_search, web_fetch, lsp). Other instructions (like writing files or executing scripts) are directly rejected at the execution layer.
- Ultimate Streaming Experience: Text and reasoning processes (collapsible "Thinking" rows) are streamed token-by-token. Background generation won't interrupt even if the browser tab is closed.
- Persistent Session State: Panel states are persisted locally per "Session + Panel Grid". Automatically sleeps when idle and silently wakes up on the next query.
- Inspectable by Design: Expand "Inherited from the main session" to see, turn by turn, what the branch actually received — the question, its reasoning, and the answer. The branch notice injected into the prompt is shown verbatim as well, so nothing about what the model sees is a black box.
📦 Installation & Setup
After installation, you must restart DSH for the client plugin to load properly.
Install via npm (Recommended):
dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-side-branch
Install via GitHub:
dsh plugin --profile web add github:wucl12/dsh-side-branch
🤖 Prompt for AI Agents: If you are an Agent responsible for installing this plugin or reading its source code, please prioritize reading AGENTS.md in this repository for hard constraints, architectural details, and automated installation guides.
🚀 How to Use
- Ask via Selection: Select any text in the main session's body, click the pop-up "Quote and ask", and a temporary session will open in the right panel with the original text sent as a quote. The passage is then recorded with that round — a collapsible quote block above your question — and the composer's quote slot clears itself, so the next question starts clean.
- Quick Entry: There is a quick entry button
↗ on the right side of the main session's input box. Click it to directly summon the Side Ask panel (can be disabled in settings).
- Independent Settings: In the Side Ask panel, you can individually specify the model and reasoning effort for the current branch without following the main session.
🛡️ Security & Limitations
- Read-Only Boundaries: "Read-only" here means no system side effects (like writing files or executing commands). However,
web_fetch / web_search still have network access, and read can read files within the process's permissions. The allowlist is hardcoded and cannot be relaxed via settings.
- What the Branch Can See: Every follow-up rebuilds it from the main session's latest settled turns, so turns the main session has finished do follow along automatically. A turn the main session has not finished yet is not visible to the branch (the cut is the last
turn/end) — but manual selection quoting is not affected by that: the limitation is on "seeing it automatically", not on "being able to quote it".
- Rebuilds Leave Session Records: Each rebuild creates a new side-session record, and the platform has no API to delete a session ⇒ records would pile up. They are reclaimed by an orphan sweep at plugin startup, which logs item by item what it deleted. While two instances share the same
DSH_HOME and run at the same time, that sweep skips entirely — a second DSH never has its live branches deleted.
- The Context Ceiling Is a Refusal: On reaching it the plugin refuses the turn and tells you to "Clear"; the oldest turns are never silently dropped.
contextFull.used is an estimate (a rebuilt session has no usage yet), so it will not match the real usage once a turn settles.
- Cache Hits Are Measured, Not Guaranteed: The high prefix-cache hit rate is a measurement, not a design promise — the platform may replace the system node in place on the side session's first step, invalidating the cache from token 0 on. And hitting the cache does not mean those tokens stop occupying the context window.
- PTC Mode Exception: If the main session uses the
ptc preset (pure code execution tool surface), since run_code is permanently rejected by this plugin, the branch will fall back to a pure text Q&A mode (no tools can be called).
📚 Further Documentation
- 简体中文: 中文说明（同一份内容）。
docs/TECHNICAL.md: full technical reference — prefix-cache mechanics, the read-only enforcement pipeline, PTC behaviour, and every known limitation.AGENTS.md: Architectural contracts and hard constraints strictly written for AI Agents.SECURITY.md: Security commitment scope and vulnerability reporting channels.docs/CHANGELOG.md: Version release history.
📄 License
MIT
