dsh-skill-manage
A DSH (DeepSeek Harness) plugin that gives the agent procedural memory: a skill_manage tool for authoring its own skills — create, patch, disable, delete — with layered delete guards. Built on skill-filesystem's hot-reload watcher, so a skill created mid-session is usable in the same session, no restart.
Pair with dsh-auto-memory for declarative memory: that one remembers facts (logs, notes, preferences), this one remembers how to do things (workflows, pitfalls, procedures).
What it adds
skill_manage tool — actions: create / patch / edit / delete / disable / enable / pin / unpin / write_file / remove_file / list
- Two scopes —
scope: 'user' (default, ~/.dsh/skills, all workspaces) or scope: 'project' (<projectRoot>/.dsh/skills, this workspace only). The project root is resolved exactly like the harness's own skill lookup: walk up from the session cwd to the nearest .git, falling back to the cwd itself. list shows both scopes in one table.
- Both on-disk layouts — directory skills (
<root>/<name>/SKILL.md, what create writes) and single-file skills (<root>/<name>.md), matching the two layouts the skill-filesystem watcher actually loads. list shows a layout flag; single-file skills refuse supporting-file actions.
- Disable/enable (reversible) — toggles
disable-model-invocation in SKILL.md frontmatter, the same key the harness's skill catalog filters on (isModelInvocable). Disabling hides a skill from the model's catalog without touching its content; enabling restores it. Prefer disable over delete for seasonal or off-context skills.
- Pin/unpin (reversible) — toggles the same
pinned frontmatter flag the delete guard reads. A pinned skill cannot be deleted by skill_manage (patch/edit still allowed); pin skills that must survive cleanups.
- Trigger discipline (English, static system-prompt section, cache-stable): create a skill when a complex task succeeded (5+ tool calls), errors were overcome, a user-corrected approach proved itself, or the user asks to remember a procedure; patch immediately when a skill hits uncovered pitfalls.
- Delete guards:
- only skills carrying the
created_by: agent frontmatter marker are deletable — marketplace/user skills are refused
pinned: true frontmatter blocks delete (patch/edit still allowed)- path confinement to the resolved skills root; symlinked skill directories refused
- name-drift guard: patch/edit cannot silently rename a skill
- Validation: name regex + length, frontmatter requires
name + description, description ≤1024 chars, SKILL.md ≤100k chars, supporting files ≤1 MiB, supporting paths confined to references/ templates/ scripts/ assets/
- Atomic writes (temp + rename) so the watcher never sees a half-written SKILL.md
- CRLF-safe frontmatter parsing
Install
Option A — via dsh plugin (recommended; handles both steps below automatically):
dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-skill-manage
Option B — manual npm install, in your DSH profile dir (e.g. ~/.dsh/profiles/web):
# 1. add the dependency
npm install dsh-skill-manage # or: pnpm add dsh-skill-manage
# 2. register the bundle in package.json → dsh.profile.bundles:
# "dsh": { "profile": { "bundles": [ ..., "dsh-skill-manage" ] } }
# 3. restart dsh web
The plugin needs no configuration. Log line [dsh-skill-manage] ready confirms it loaded.
From source (local link) — for development:
# in your DSH profile dir (e.g. ~/.dsh/profiles/web)
# 1. package.json dependencies:
# "dsh-skill-manage": "link:/abs/path/to/dsh-skill-manage"
# 2. dsh.profile.bundles: append "dsh-skill-manage"
pnpm install
# 3. restart dsh web
Develop & test
node test.mjs # guard-level smoke tests (73 cases, sandboxed DSH_HOME)
node loadtest.mjs # host-shape contract + real round-trip (set DSH_HOME to sandbox it)
CI runs both on every push/PR (.github/workflows/ci.yml).
v0 known limitations
- Nested category dirs (
<root>/<category>/<name>/SKILL.md) are not listed or operable — the harness watcher does not load them either (it loads only <root>/<name>/SKILL.md and <root>/<name>.md)
- No YAML flow collections in frontmatter (
tags: [a, b] stays a raw string)
- Project scope assumes one root per session (the session cwd's git root)
License
MIT
