dsh-sidebar
A Git sidebar for DeepSeek Harness Web.
dsh-sidebar puts source control beside your DSH session: review changes, stage files, write commits, sync with a remote, and browse the commit graph without leaving the browser. A bottom Panel adds file preview, Markdown, and a live terminal. The sidebar automatically follows the repository in the active session's workspace and uses the Git credentials already configured on the machine running dsh web.
Table of Contents
Security
Discard permanently removes changes. Selecting discard twice throws away a file's changes. For an untracked file, it deletes the file. Check the file before confirming the second discard action.
Every git action the cards run is scoped by DSH's file sandbox to the Working Repository: a workspace-write policy covering the repository and temp areas, and nothing wider. Sync actions (fetch, pull, push) use the Git credentials and ssh configuration already present on the DSH Web host. No API key, token, or extra DSH setting is needed, and no credential is stored by the plugin.
Background
dsh-sidebar is the Sidebar Package for DeepSeek Harness Web. DSH Web renders a three-column shell: sessions on the left, the conversation in the center, and a Details Column on the right that the shipped GUI owns but leaves without a reachable entry point. The Sidebar occupies that column, so no reachable UI is displaced. On the new-session page it collapses to a Rail on the right edge and re-expands from it; inside a session the same two region toggles live in the session header's utilities row (see CONTEXT.md). A bottom Panel, modeled on the VS Code terminal panel, hosts closable Panel Tabs and is independent of the Sidebar.
What you get:
- A collapsible sidebar on the right side of DSH Web
- A bottom Panel with Panel Tabs — file preview, Markdown, and a live terminal — available as soon as a session exists
- Source control for the active session's workspace
- A view-only file explorer over the active session's workspace (the Explorer card)
- Staged, unstaged, untracked, and conflicting-file views
- Stage, unstage, discard, commit, fetch, pull, and push actions
- A commit graph with branches, tags, remotes, merge lanes, and infinite scrolling
- A terminal that draws Powerlevel10k prompts correctly with no Nerd Font installed: prompt icons ship embedded in the plugin and the shell runs with
TERM=xterm-256color
- Per-browser controls for showing or hiding cards
Cards are independent of one another: adding, removing, or hiding a Card must not affect other Cards, and future Cards join through the same Card Manifest. The Sidebar's width and the Panel's height are globally remembered region sizes that every workspace and session restores.
Limitations: the Sidebar occupies DSH Web's right Details Column. If another plugin also uses that column, the most recently registered plugin wins. The Commit Graph is designed for clear everyday history browsing, not as a full Git GUI replacement.
Install
Compatibility
dsh-sidebar supports DeepSeek Harness 0.1.1-rc.2 and 0.1.2-rc.1. The same install steps apply to both versions. No per-version fallback is needed: the slot names (details, shell.overlay), the injected services (shell, typert, subprocess, sandboxPolicy, slots, remote, timer), and the plugin manifest format are unchanged between these releases. DSH resolves the plugin's peer dependencies by name only, and the declared @deepseek-ai/dsh-typert-protocol range covers both releases, so no manifest change is needed per version.
Dependencies
- DeepSeek Harness with the Web profile (
dsh web)
- Node.js 20 or later
- Git installed on the host that runs DSH Web
Adding the plugin
dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-sidebar
Open ~/.dsh/profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml and add:
- insert:
- id: sidebar
name: 'dsh-sidebar'
You can also copy the same entry from cordis.patch.example.yml.
Restart DSH Web, open a session, then select the arrow on the far right edge of the page to open the sidebar.
That's it. The sidebar automatically follows the repository in the active session's workspace. If the workspace is not a Git repository, it shows a helpful empty state instead.
Install from GitHub
Use this option when you want to install directly from a branch, tag, or commit instead of the npm release:
dsh plugin --profile web add git+https://github.com/auggie246/dsh-sidebar.git
Then complete the patch and restart steps above.
[!NOTE]
A GitHub install runs this repository's build step. If pnpm reports ERR_PNPM_GIT_DEP_PREPARE_NOT_ALLOWED, copy the allowBuilds entry from its error message into ~/.dsh/profiles/web/pnpm-workspace.yaml, then run the same install command again. The entry is specific to the Git commit pnpm downloaded.
To pin a version, append #main, #v0.4.0, or a commit SHA to the Git URL.
Uninstall
-
Remove the dsh-sidebar block from ~/.dsh/profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml.
-
Run:
dsh plugin --profile web remove dsh-sidebar
-
Restart dsh web.
Usage
Source Control
Use the Source Control card to work with the current repository:
- Select + or − beside a file or group to stage or unstage changes.
- Select discard twice to confirm that you want to throw away a file's changes. See Security for what discard removes.
- Enter a commit message and select Commit. Press ⌘/Ctrl + Enter to commit from the keyboard.
- If no files are staged, committing stages all changes first—similar to VS Code's Source Control view.
- Use the sync controls to fetch, pull, or push. Pull and push require an upstream branch.
The card refreshes while it is visible, so branch and working-tree state stay current.
Commit Graph
The Commit Graph card displays commits from every local and remote ref. Each row shows the subject, the author's colored initials, and the relative time; hover a row for the full author, date, and hash. Scroll to load older commits. Right-click a commit to copy its hash or message.
File previews
Use the Panel + picker to open a workspace path as HTML file, Markdown file, or Text file. Each choice is explicit, so the same path can stay open under different presentations.
On the first load after this upgrade, saved File Previews migrate once by extension. HTML and Markdown files keep their rendered presentations. Every other file becomes Text Preview. Later picker choices remain unchanged across Panel remounts and page reloads.
Text Preview shows inert source text with theme colors and a monospace font. It preserves whitespace, keeps long lines unwrapped, and scrolls in both directions. Empty files show File is empty.. Files containing a NUL byte show Binary files are not supported. instead. The existing 2 MB limit and read errors apply to every File Preview.
Explorer
The Explorer card is a view-only file explorer over the current session's workspace. Unlike the Git cards it is not git-bound: it renders in any workspace, git repository or not, and it hides nothing — dotfiles, .git, and gitignored entries all show.
- Select a folder to expand or collapse it. Each expansion lists that one folder, so large folders such as
node_modules cost nothing until you open them, and a folder with more than 1000 entries shows a "+N more" row.
- Select a file to open a read-only preview Panel Tab.
.html and .htm use HTML Preview. .md and .markdown use Markdown Preview. Matching ignores letter case. Every other path uses Text Preview, including dotfiles and extensionless files. Selecting the file again focuses the matching path-and-presentation tab. Picker overrides for the same path remain separate tabs. Selecting a file also opens the Panel if it is closed.
- The card refreshes while it is visible by re-listing only the workspace root and the folders you expanded.
- View-only means exactly that: the card renders the tree and opens previews. Creating, renaming, moving, and deleting files is out of scope.
Customize the sidebar
Select the gear icon in the sidebar header to show or hide cards. Your choice is saved in the browser, so it remains after reopening DSH Web.
Configuration and privacy
There is nothing to configure. The plugin uses your existing Git credentials and configuration on the DSH Web host. Card visibility and layout state (Sidebar open/closed and width, Panel open/closed and height) are stored only in this browser — globally, shared by every workspace — under dsh.rsidebar.cards.v1 and dsh.rsidebar.panel.v1.
Try it for one session
Want to try the sidebar without installing it permanently? The repository includes a dynamic plugin that an agent can load into the running DSH process. It disappears when DSH restarts. See dynamic/README.md for the one-session setup prompt.
Troubleshooting
- The sidebar is missing: confirm the composition entry is in the Web profile, restart
dsh web, then open the arrow on the far right edge.
- “Not a git repository”: open a session whose workspace is inside a Git repository.
- Fetch, pull, or push fails: check that Git is installed and that the host has the required Git credentials. Pull and push also need an upstream branch. On hosts where DSH runs the session under its file sandbox, ssh can refuse its system config because the sandbox masks file ownership outside the workspace ("Bad owner or permissions on /etc/ssh/ssh_config.d/…"). The card retries on that error with your own
~/.ssh/config, then with a config-free ssh — so your host aliases, ports and identity settings still apply and no key name is hard-coded. The same push or pull in your own terminal is never affected.
- A commit fails: make sure Git has a configured author identity and that your commit message is not empty.
- A prompt icon still shows as a box: the embedded icon set covers Powerlevel10k's default icons. If your prompt configures an icon outside that set, add its codepoint to
scripts/nerd-icon-glyphs.txt and run npm run build:nerd-icons.
Maintainers
@auggie246.
Thanks
Contributing
Questions and bug reports go to GitHub Issues. Pull requests are accepted.
Run the checks before proposing a change:
npm test
After changing dynamic/host.js or dynamic/client.js, regenerate the one-session bundle:
npm run bundle:dynamic
Repository layout:
lib/ Permanent plugin source
dynamic/ One-session dynamic-plugin bundle
scripts/ Bundling and verification scripts
docs/ Design notes
Releases follow Semantic Versioning, and changes are recorded in CHANGELOG.md in Keep a Changelog format. Publishing a GitHub Release triggers the npm publish workflow (npm trusted publishing via OIDC), so a release is the only step needed to ship a version.
License
MIT © auggie246
