DSH Archive Manager
DSH Archive Manager is a community-maintained DeepSeek Harness (DSH) plugin, not an official DeepSeek AI product.
This document describes 1.1.17. See Changelog for published releases.
Overview
Put inactive conversations away and find them again when needed, keeping everyday task lists tidy.
- Dual views & primary sidebar entry: Toggleable persistent icon on the host's primary sidebar opens a 960px centered workspace view for both Archived and Unarchived sessions, eliminating narrow dialog scrolling constraints.
- Full lifecycle session management: Archive individual chats, all chats in a workspace, cross-project batches, and restore or open sessions seamlessly.
- Full-row sidebar right-click actions: Right-click directly anywhere on sidebar workspace or session rows to trigger dedicated actions menus; passes through native system context menus on ungrouped or blank rows without accidental clicks.
- Zero-jitter star alignment & status dot coexistence (#90, #92): Standardizes favorite stars to 16×16px size and overlays the host leading slot via absolute positioning, eliminating horizontal title jitter; during active states (running or waiting approval), host status dots remain 100% visible while the star badge adapts into a 10px bottom-right badge for seamless coexistence, preserving custom skin compatibility.
- Workspace quick action menu: Provides fast "Copy folder path", "Open folder" (directly opens in Windows Explorer or macOS Finder), and one-click "Archive sessions" in the sidebar workspace menu.
- Move session across workspaces: Move conversations across project workspaces via a cascading hover submenu with process quiescence, atomic rewriting, instant projection pre-warming, and NTFS colon-safety for IM sessions.
- Unified accordion cards & 40px ultra-compact rows: Unifies workspace groups with Skills Manager-style integrated drawer cards (38px header); compacts session row height to 40px for doubled information density.
- Host-native dark mode checkboxes: Reverts checkbox styling strictly to host primitive Checkbox specifications using native
accent-color, perfectly blending with dark backgrounds and brand blue checked states.
- Anti-bleedthrough modals & localized accessibility: Mounts wide preview dialogs directly to body (
portalToBody) with solid backing and frosted blur to prevent text bleedthrough; adds comprehensive trilingual close button accessibility labels (common.close).
- Standardized section ID & coexistence compatibility (#91): Section ID updated to
archive-manager with runtime fail-soft try/catch protection, ensuring smooth coexistence with third-party archive plugins.
- Clean single-line adaptive toolbar: Uses the host's native
Input primitive with an official search icon and glowing green focus border, flexibly expanding to fill remaining width; arranged as search input, view filter/sort menu, project filter, and date range in a clean single line with strict box-model boundaries.
- Unified full-text search & Codex composite menu: Search automatically covers both conversation titles and body history (including user and assistant messages) by default; consolidates session filtering (all / favorites only) and sorting into a two-section Codex-style menu with native checkmarks.
- Lightweight DateRange capsule & calendar popover: Completely replaces the native date input to eliminate dark-mode inversion and focus loss (#74); displays the selected range in a single line with a dedicated clear button; supports quick presets, localized English/Chinese/Russian typography, and full WAI-ARIA keyboard navigation (arrows, Home/End, PageUp/Down with month-end clamping) with real-time range stretch preview.
- Automated idle session cleanup: Specify an idle threshold in days to discover inactive chats, automatically protecting running tasks, interactive prompts, and starred items, with instant undo support.
- Permanent deletion: Thoroughly purge unwanted transcripts, cache rows, and indexes with per-item retry reporting.
- Orphan subagent detection & cleanup: Automatically detect residue subagents whose parent sessions were externally deleted, displaying disk usage and enabling safe one-click reclamation.
- Controlled online updates & reverse proxy ready: Features a toggleable online update switch, enterprise host-level configuration locking, and native baseURI dynamic endpoint resolution for prefix-stripping reverse proxies.
Manual list-cache rebuild (#88)
Opening Archive Manager checks only headers and official cached projections for ordinary cold sessions in registered workspaces, ungrouped lists, and archives, while excluding special IM channel sessions (im:). A repair card appears only for missing/incompatible caches or an unavailable title projection. Click to read complete logs one at a time through read-only handles and rebuild registered projections with official coldSnapshot, saving to official session_projcache.
No old plugin domains are scanned, no JSON is copied, no Session/Agent is activated, no model is called, and archives/schedules remain unchanged. Active sessions are skipped; failed items can be retried individually; feedback provides a "Done" dismiss button and auto-dismisses when clear. The official session list is refreshed and candidates checked again afterward. A persistence-confirmation timeout means unknown, not cancelled: deletion remains ordered after pending native writes. Closing the page stops later requests, not the one already sent.
Orphan subagent cleanup
When parent sessions are deleted externally or via the host, orphaned subagents may remain on disk. The Archive Manager detects these orphan sessions in the Organizer panel, calculates disk space usage, and provides one-click physical deletion.
Search and preview
- Archived and Unarchived share title/content search, project, favorites, updated-date filters, and creation-time sorting. Star or unstar conversations on either tab.
- Search automatically covers both conversation titles and body history (including user and assistant messages) by default. Date filters include the entire local end date and combine with project and favorites.
- Matches show snippets and highlights. On Archived, click a snippet or More → Quick preview to inspect context without restoring. On Unarchived, a snippet opens the full conversation.
- Preview renders Markdown tables, quotes, and code blocks with role labels; switch to source text for highlights. It shows up to eight recent messages, or context around the first match. Each message is limited to 2,000 UTF-16 code units without splitting Unicode characters.
- Search accepts up to 200 query characters and reads batches of at most 20 sessions, sequentially within each batch. Tools, attachments, reasoning, system messages, and plugin injections are excluded. Read failures remain visible and can be retried. Stored text is not the model's current context.
- There is no persistent full-text index. Large or long conversations can be slow; narrow project, dates, or favorites first. No session-count or latency guarantee has been established. Changing filters prevents later batches and stale results, but cannot interrupt the batch already reading.
Screenshots
1. Archive Settings Management (Accordion Cards & Dark Mode Checkboxes)
Search, favorite, preview, restore, and clean up in Settings → Archived sessions → Archived with integrated drawer cards, 40px ultra-compact rows, and native dark mode checkboxes:
Archived: shared search filters, favorites, and compact rows
Switch to Unarchived for smart idle cleanup suggestions, one-click archiving, and project-wide operations:
Unarchived: smart idle cleanup and project archiving
2. Centered Full-Screen Workspace Panel (Direct Sidebar Entry)
With the sidebar entry enabled, open a full-featured 960px centered workspace panel directly from the main sidebar:
Main Workspace Panel: dedicated sidebar entry expanding 960px centered view
3. Native Sidebar Full-Row Right-Click & Cascading Menus
Right-click directly on any workspace or session row in the primary sidebar to open context menus and cascading workspace migration submenus:
Screenshots showcase the core management panels, centered workspace view, and native sidebar context menu enhancements in lossless WebP format.
Installation
A working DeepSeek Harness environment is required. Examples use the web profile; adjust to your environment.
Plugin installation supports npm registry, locally built .tgz packages, and GitHub. Both GitHub and npm contain runnable lib artifacts.
Ask an agent to install it
Send this prompt to an agent that can run terminal commands on your computer:
Please install the latest @michengai/dsh-archive-manager into my DSH web profile using the official npm registry, verify activation, and explain how to reload.
Install manually
[Console]::OutputEncoding = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8
$OutputEncoding = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8
dsh plugin --profile web add @michengai/dsh-archive-manager@latest --registry=https://registry.npmjs.org/
Restart DSH Web, then refresh the page (or hard-refresh with Ctrl+Shift+R). Open Settings → Archived sessions to get started. To update, click Check for updates or re-run the installation command.
- Host compatibility: Full DeepSeek Harness
0.2.x line (>=0.2.0-rc.1 <0.3.0-0), verified with every 0.2.x release candidate (0.2.0-rc.1, 0.2.0-rc.2, 0.2.1-rc.1 through 0.2.1-rc.5) and the latest alpha (0.2.2-alpha.3). Intermediate alphas of a release candidate line are outside the supported range, so install a release candidate or the newest alpha.
- Legacy hosts prior to
0.2.0-rc.1 are no longer supported. The version gate cleanly intercepts breaking changes in the 0.3.0 generation. Users on 0.1.x hosts should install 1.0.20.
- Reverse proxy deployment: Supports hosting DSH behind prefix-stripping reverse proxies (e.g.
/app/dsh/). API and update endpoints automatically resolve against the page base URI (document.baseURI), preventing 404 errors caused by lost prefix segments.
Plugin Configuration & Toggles
The plugin follows standard DSH bundle configuration conventions. Options are located at:
Sidebar → Plugins → Click Archive Manager (the host's plugins.bundle.config slot).
Native configuration options are available:
1. Entry Location (entryLocation)
- Options:
- All locations (
both): Displays the Archive navigation icon in the left sidebar and keeps the menu entry under Settings → Archived sessions.
- Sidebar only (
sidebar): Displays the Archive navigation icon in the left sidebar and unregisters the settings section for a streamlined settings dialog.
- Settings only (
settings) (Default): Keeps the entry under Settings → Archived sessions while maintaining a minimal sidebar.
- Fail-safe Guarantee: A mutually-exclusive 3-state segmented control ensures at least one entry point is always accessible, preventing accidental orphan states.
- Effect:
- When the sidebar is enabled, clicking the icon opens Archive Manager directly in the primary workspace with a 960px centered container (matching host plugin manager conventions). This eliminates vertical scrolling constraints in narrow settings dialogs;
- When switching to Settings only, safely unregisters the sidebar entry (and resets the active panel gracefully if currently viewing the panel, preventing blank views);
- Backward compatible with legacy
sidebarEntry boolean settings (true maps to both, false maps to settings).
2. Online Updates (onlineUpdate / updater)
- Default: Enabled (
true)
- Description: Controls whether the plugin checks for and installs updates from npm.
- Effect:
Usage Guide
| Action | How to do it |
|---|
| Archive one chat | Open the session context menu in the sidebar and choose Archive session |
| Archive a workspace | Open the workspace menu and choose Archive session (opens an in-place confirmation overlay) |
| Search & filter | Open Settings → Archived sessions or click Archive in the sidebar; search bar automatically covers titles and body messages; use the Codex-style view menu to filter (all / favorites only) and sort; select projects from dropdown; pick dates with the single-field capsule |
| Custom calendar & keyboard nav | Click the date capsule to open the lightweight calendar popover; supports all time and quick presets; provides complete WAI-ARIA keyboard navigation (arrows, Home/End, PageUp/Down, Enter/Space) and real-time range stretch preview |
| Quick preview | Click a match snippet or More → Quick preview to inspect context with highlights without restoring |
| Adjust ordering | Sort by recently archived, update time, creation time, or title in the view menu |
| Restore a chat | Click the restore icon on any row; use More → Restore and open to resume the chat directly |
| Archive entire group | On Unarchived, click the … menu next to a group and confirm archiving all chats in that project |
| Favorite chats | Click the star icon on any row; use the view menu to filter starred chats |
| Clean up idle chats | On Unarchived, set an idle day threshold, automatically protecting running and starred chats, preview candidates, and confirm |
| Copy session ID | Select Copy session ID from the More menu |
| Clean up orphan subagents | Detect and physically delete orphan subagents in the Organizer panel |
| Archive across projects | Switch to Unarchived, select sessions across projects, then click and confirm |
The page opens on Archived, with Unarchived on the right. Switching tabs clears selections; changing search or project filters preserves them. Check the hidden selection count before applying bulk actions, or clear your selection first.
Select all filtered results selects matching sessions, including collapsed groups. Project-wide actions still apply to the whole project regardless of search filters. Unarchived excludes subagents and blank placeholders.
Settings and sidebar batch archive/restore call the official single-session APIs ctx.workspaces.archiveSession and ctx.workspaces.unarchiveSession serially.
Favorites and idle cleanup
Compact project groups can be collapsed. Stars and restore/archive icons appear on the right; archived session menus include restore-and-open and deletion.
- Use the star on either tab and the Favorites only dropdown to find important chats. Favorites persist on the host across archive, restore, and browser changes. Reopen management to see changes made in other pages. Unknown or unreadable sessions retain their stored favorite IDs; cleanup requires confirmed artifact absence.
- On Unarchived, enter 1–36,500 whole idle days and preview candidates under the current filters. Deselect individual candidates before confirmation. Favorites, the current chat, running sessions (including subagents), and pending interactions are protected; sessions without a valid activity time are excluded.
- Archive rechecks favorites and activity. Batch archive, restore, and delete report progress plus successful, skipped, and failed counts. A failure does not stop the rest; retry only the failed items. Delete retries still require confirmation.
- Undo this archive restores sessions archived by the current batch, including successful retries. It is available only while the current management page remains open; refreshing or closing clears it. Permanent deletion cannot be undone.
- Favorites can still be archived manually. Protection applies to idle cleanup only. There is no scheduled or automatic background cleanup.
View and continue archived conversations
Native conversation navigation has been available since 0.1.40; 1.0.0 uses these entry points:
- Click the session title: open the native DSH session to view messages, attachments, and tool details. Continue chatting while keeping the session archived.
- More → Restore and open: unarchive the session and open it to resume work.
Search API compatibility (integrators)
The canonical API is workspaceRegistry.searchSessionContent({ sessionIds, query }), covering archived and unarchived sessions. Supply 1–20 session IDs and a nonempty query of 1–200 characters; IDs are deduplicated. Results have the shape { items: [{ sessionId, seq, snippet }], failures: [{ sessionId, message }] }. Individual read failures appear in failures; invalid input rejects the call.
searchArchivedContent remains the legacy, archived-only entry point. Both use the existing host Typert connection and authorization boundary; no HTTP endpoint or authentication setting is added. Keep the legacy descriptor throughout the currently supported host range, including patch releases. Removal requires an explicit compatibility-range change, client migration, and deprecation notice. New clients prefer the canonical API and use the old one only as a version fallback, never dispatching the same search to both.
Updates
Click Check for updates in the archive management page header. DSH CLI or Desktop environments with automatic update support can update directly; other environments provide a manual command for the current profile. You can also rerun the installation command above.
FAQ
Why is the entry missing after installation?
Restart DSH Web and hard-refresh your browser. Make sure you installed into the profile you are using. If the entry is still missing, run:
[Console]::OutputEncoding = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8
$OutputEncoding = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8
dsh --profile web --dump-config
The configuration should include ui-workspace-archive-manager and must not disable official workspace or session-projection-cache. A leftover archive-manager-host override can be removed. On current DSH hosts the official ui-settings-unarchive-sessions entry is gone, so this plugin no longer disables it (doing so only warned that the patch entry was missing). If your profile's cordis.patch.yml still disables workspace, session-projection-cache, or ui-workspace, remove those overrides and restart.
What happens to historical plugin caches after upgrading?
The plugin neither replaces the official projection-cache table nor scans, validates, or migrates historical plugin caches. Opening the archive list does not read complete logs or write back official projections to fill missing cache entries. Session logs remain host-owned, and the host rebuilds derived projections such as titles on demand. Enabling or disabling the plugin does not switch cache tables; there is no need to enable it once just to import old caches.
A cold session without an official cache entry may initially have no title in the list; refreshing the list alone does not guarantee a rebuild. Reading the log can recover the title, and restoring the session as live lets the native write path persist its cache. Historical plugin cache files are left untouched: they are neither read nor deleted automatically. See the changelog for details.
How is archiving different from deletion?
Archiving puts a conversation away so you can restore it later. Permanent deletion cannot be undone and may also remove that session's attachments. It does not delete your project working directory. Deletion requires confirmation.
Can I use it with Codex UI?
Yes. Codex UI keeps its sidebar appearance and interactions. Archive management remains available in Settings → Archived sessions.
Coexisting with other archive plugins
This plugin registers its Settings entry under the section ID archive-manager. If other session archive plugins (such as @linxin666/dsh-session-archive) are installed at the same time, two distinct "Archived sessions" entries will appear in the settings sidebar. Both can be accessed independently as expected.
For other problems, open an issue with your DSH and plugin versions, reproduction steps, and error details.
Install from source
Expand for development or testing unreleased changes
Run these commands in a directory of your choice. For local changes that have not been pushed, use the existing working copy.
[Console]::OutputEncoding = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8
$OutputEncoding = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8
git clone https://github.com/MichengAI/dsh-archive-manager.git
Set-Location .\dsh-archive-manager
pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm build
dsh plugin --profile web add .
Restart DSH Web and hard-refresh your browser afterward. Source code in src uses strict TypeScript. Both GitHub and npm include a ready-to-run lib. After changing source, run pnpm build before committing, or a source install keeps the previous runtime. Published JavaScript entry points and runtime modules remain unchanged; installing the npm package does not require TypeScript. Run pnpm typecheck for type checking, pnpm test to validate changes, or pnpm verify for the full checks.
DSH product ecosystem
For a desktop workbench, download DSH Codex Desktop. Existing DeepSeek Harness installations can add plugins as needed by following each project's README. Below are 11 first-party plugins; consult the corresponding desktop release notes and bundled catalog for what that version includes.
| Plugin | What you can do |
|---|
| Codex UI | Organize projects and conversations, search tasks, and navigate chat turns |
| Agency Agents | Choose and summon specialists for your task |
| Skills Manager | Find, enable, create, and import local skills |
| Archive Manager | Search, restore, or clean up archived conversations |
| IM Connect | Send tasks and receive replies through messaging platforms |
| Automation | Schedule tasks and review each run |
| BTW | Ask side questions without interrupting the main task |
| Simplify | Use /simplify to improve code within your Git changes |
| PUA | Guide the Agent to try new approaches after failures, investigate causes, and verify results before completion |
| Code Review | Use /review to request an independent Agent code review and receive the report in the current conversation |
| Codex Pet | View conversation notifications and respond to tool approvals and questions through a desktop pet |
License
Licensed under Apache License 2.0.
