Paper mode for DeepSeek Harness
A non-coding work mode for DeepSeek Harness — with enforced artifact governance.
Built for everything but code: research, analysis, reports. Auto-archived per workspace — tidy, consistent and easy to find.
Coding agents are great at producing code and bad at delivering everything else: research notes, CSVs, charts, screenshots and one-off scripts end up dumped in the workspace root, named report.md or 最终版.md, while coding and analysis sessions blur together in the sidebar.
Paper mode is an agent preset for DSH that gives non-coding work its own contract — and it knows what kind of workspace it is running in:
| Guarantee | What it means |
|---|
| 🧭 Workspace-aware | Automatically detects whether the workspace is a git repository or a plain folder. Code repositories get the archive added to their local .git/info/exclude and keep scratch out; plain folders just get the archive, with no git handling at all. |
| 🗂 One archive | Every output is written to the workspace's AI-Cooperate/ folder (also recognized: AI-CoWork/, AI-Corporate/). |
| 🏷 Enforced naming | Files are named YYMMDD-<project-code>-<name>.<ext>, with the real system date, a project code that stays constant for the session, and -2/-3 de-duplication. Never overwrites. |
| 🧹 Scratch, not clutter | Intermediate files (temporary scripts, intermediate data, process screenshots) go to an auto-cleaned system-temp scratch directory via the scratch tool — never the workspace — and are deleted after 7 days. |
| 📑 Identifiable sessions | A small host plugin prefixes Paper session titles with 📑, so the sidebar shows which sessions are analysis and which are code. |
The naming is not a prompt suggestion: every new file must be written through the bundled cowork_save tool, which enforces the archive folder, the date/project prefix, sanitizing, de-duplication and never-overwrite at the filesystem boundary.
Before / after
Install
Requires a DSH build with the plugin/bundle system (Desktop or dsh CLI).
dsh plugin --profile desktop add github:sevenhsu7/dsh-paper-mode
Then restart DeepSeek Harness. A new "Paper mode" preset appears in Settings → Agent presets and in the new-task picker (custom presets group). The default preset stays Standard — Paper mode is selected explicitly, so coding sessions never see its rules.
Internal ids stay unchanged for compatibility: preset id cowork, package @local/dsh-cowork-preset, tool cowork_save, repo sevenhsu7/dsh-paper-mode. Only the display name and the emoji badge changed (💻 → 📑).
Alternative: install from a local clone
git clone https://github.com/sevenhsu7/dsh-paper-mode.git
dsh plugin --profile desktop add ./dsh-paper-mode
Or use Creator mode in the app (Settings → Agent presets → Creator) and ask:
Install the bundle at /absolute/path/to/dsh-paper-mode with plugin_manager install_bundle.
Agent-readable install recipe
See redskill.md or the skill at skills/install-paper-mode/SKILL.md. A user can point their agent at that file and say "install this".
Use
- Create a new task and select Paper mode.
- Ask for research, analysis, reports, documents, charts or data work.
- Files land in
<workspace>/AI-Cooperate/; if a step needs intermediate files, the agent calls scratch and works inside that directory.
- The session title starts with 📑.
Mode card and sidebar
How it works
This repo is a single DSH bundle (dsh.bundle.patch → cordis.patch.yml) that contributes four things:
preset-cowork — an @deepseek-ai/dsh-agent-preset declaration. It carries the full standard tool set (shell, file read/write/search, web, subagents, todo, plan, compaction, …) plus the Paper mode persona, and intentionally does not mount agent-instructions, so coding rules from repo AGENTS.md files do not leak into analysis sessions.cowork-save — a preset plugin that registers the cowork_save tool. The filesystem contract lives in save-core.js (pure, unit-testable) and is registered as a hand-built JSON-Schema tool definition in save-tool.js. That file intentionally imports nothing from @deepseek-ai/*: the profile resolves this bundle as a linked package, so a bare specifier would resolve from the bundle's own directory rather than the dsh installation and would fail preset activation.paper-scratch — a preset plugin (scratch-tool.js, contract in scratch-core.js) that registers the scratch tool: creates a per-session directory under os.tmpdir() named paper-YYMMDD-<project-code>-<session>, plus an optional label subdirectory. A host plugin (scratch-cleanup.js) sweeps that namespace every six hours and deletes directories older than 7 days, skipping live sessions.cowork-title-badge — a host plugin (index.js) that watches session/title events and prefixes 📑 on titles of sessions whose preset is cowork (internal id). Provider titles are decorated as soon as they land, fallback titles after a grace period, user renames are left alone, and titles are truncated to fit the 80-byte limit.
cowork-preset/
├─ package.json # bundle manifest + plugin exports
├─ cordis.patch.yml # preset declaration + plugin rows
├─ index.js # host plugin: 📑 session title badge
├─ save-tool.js # preset plugin: registers cowork_save (no dsh imports)
├─ save-core.js # enforced archive/naming logic (pure)
├─ scratch-tool.js # preset plugin: registers the scratch tool
├─ scratch-core.js # scratch naming + TTL sweep logic (pure)
├─ scratch-cleanup.js # host plugin: 7-day scratch cleanup timer
├─ assets/ # README illustrations
└─ skills/ # agent install skill ("redskill")
cowork_save
cowork_save(filename, content | source_path, project_code?, subdir?)
- Resolves the archive folder:
AI-Cooperate/ (the name is unchanged), or an existing AI-CoWork/, AI-Corporate/, ai-corporate/. If several candidates exist it refuses and asks the agent to check with the user — it never guesses or merges.
- Stamps the local date (
YYMMDD) and a project code (given, or derived deterministically from the workspace folder name, e.g. acme → Acm, shop-app → SA).
- Sanitizes the file name (spaces/underscores →
-, forbidden characters removed, date prefixes not duplicated) and appends -2, -3, … instead of overwriting.
- Copies binary files via
source_path and supports optional subdir grouping.
- Git-aware: when the workspace is inside a git repository (including linked worktrees), the archive folder is appended to the repository's local
.git/info/exclude — idempotently, and never to the tracked .gitignore. The tool result reports gitignored: exclude | already | not-a-repo | failed.
Example result: AI-Cooperate/261018-AoC-竞品调研.md
Naming anatomy
scratch
scratch(project_code?, label?)
Creates (and returns) the session's scratch directory under the OS temp directory:
$TMPDIR/paper-261018-AoC-1f2e/ # date + project code + short session id
- Use it for temporary scripts, intermediate data and process screenshots — not for deliverables, and never write scratch into the workspace (including
.tmp/).
- Optional
label adds a subdirectory (e.g. charts); traversal segments are dropped.
- Directories are created with
0700 permissions, carry a .paper-scratch.json ownership record, and are deleted by scratch-cleanup.js once their newest file is older than 7 days — unless the owning session is still live.
- Copy anything worth keeping into the archive with
cowork_save before the directory expires.
Workspace detection
Before saving, cowork_save inspects the workspace:
- It walks up from the workspace root to the nearest
.git — a directory for normal clones, or a file for linked worktrees — so it can tell a code repository from a plain folder.
- Code repository (including worktrees and nested workspaces): the archive is added to the repository's local
.git/info/exclude, so git status stays clean; scratch always lives in system temp, never in the repo.
- Plain folder: no git handling at all — no
.gitignore, no exclude file, just the archive. A directory that merely contains repositories (e.g. a work/ folder) stays a plain folder.
Git repositories
If the workspace lives in a git repository, the first cowork_save also adds the archive folder to the repository's local .git/info/exclude:
# Paper mode archive (local only)
AI-Cooperate/
- Only that clone is affected; no tracked file changes and no diff for teammates.
- Works for nested workspaces (page pattern is unanchored) and linked worktrees (the common git dir is used).
- Idempotent: an existing pattern is reported as
already.
- Already-tracked archive folders are not silently untracked —
git rm -r --cached AI-Cooperate remains a manual decision.
Customize
Everything lives in cordis.patch.yml:
- preset display name / description / order (
name, description, order);
- persona rules (archive folder, temp-file policy, boundaries);
- tool set (add or remove rows from the preset
plugins list).
Note: DSH localizes only built-in presets. Custom preset name / description are shown verbatim, so pick one language (the repo ships English; a Chinese copy is kept in comments in cordis.patch.yml).
This is a prompt-level contract for the agent plus a filesystem-level contract for the save tool; it is not an OS sandbox. Paper mode and Standard mode share one DSH workspace and permission model.
Compatibility
- DeepSeek Harness Desktop /
dsh profiles that mount @deepseek-ai/dsh-web-app (session titles and agent presets included).
- The title badge requires the session-title service (mounted by the shipped web app); without it, only the 📑 badge is skipped.
- Claude Code / Codex / Cursor do not read this preset; those tools keep their own conventions.
License
MIT — see LICENSE.
中文说明
Paper mode 是给 DeepSeek Harness 增加的一个「非编码工作模式」：选中它，AI 只做调研、分析、报告、文档、图表、表格、数据处理这类工作，并遵守一套产物治理规则：
- 产物统一写入工作区的
AI-Cooperate/（文件夹名保持不变；已有的 AI-CoWork/、AI-Corporate/ 也会识别）；在 git 仓库里第一次保存会自动写进 .git/info/exclude（只影响本机，不动被跟踪的 .gitignore），git status 保持干净；
- 文件名强制为
YYMMDD-项目代码-文件名，日期取系统时间，项目代码整场会话一致，重名自动 -2/-3，绝不覆盖；
- 过程文件（临时脚本、中间数据、截图）不进工作区：通过
scratch 工具放到系统临时目录，7 天后自动清理；
- 自动识别工作区：是 git 仓库就自动写
.git/info/exclude、过程文件不进仓库；是普通文件夹就只创建归档目录，不做任何 git 操作；
- 会话标题自动带 📑，侧边栏一眼区分分析会话和编码会话；
- 最关键：规则只活在模式里。没选这个模式，规则就不存在——所以编码会话完全不受影响。
安装：
dsh plugin --profile desktop add github:sevenhsu7/dsh-paper-mode
重启 DSH 后，在 设置 → Agent 预设 里会出现「Paper mode」，新建任务时选择即可。默认模式仍是 Standard。
如果想让 AI 帮你装，把 redskill.md 丢给你的 Agent，说「照这个装」。
