dsh-emacs-bridge

This is a two-way bridge between Emacs and a Deepseek Harness session. The bridge moves text from Emacs to DeepSeek Harness (DSH), and vice versa, over loopback HTTP. This lets you type in Emacs and read DSH's replies without copy-pasting, while also avoiding streaming voluminous LLM outputs through Emacs.

It consists of two components:

• dsh-plugin/ — a DeepSeek Harness plugin (dsh-emacs-bridge).
• emacs/dsh-bridge.el — an Emacs package to interact with the harness.
• emacs/dsh-bridge-install.el — its optional companion library for installing and uninstalling the DSH plugin, loaded on demand.

Installation

Requirements

• dsh, the DeepSeek Harness.
• Node.js and pnpm to build the plugin.
• Emacs 29 or later.
• (Recommended) The markdown-mode Emacs package.

Emacs package

To build an Emacs package that also bundles the DSH plugin, run this in the repository's root directory:

make package

Then, in Emacs:

1. M-x package-install-file RET /path/to/dsh-bridge-<version>.tar RET
2. (optional) If you run DSH from a source checkout, customize the variable dsh-bridge-dsh-command (e.g., M-x customize-variable RET dsh-bridge-dsh-command RET) with the DSH command (see below). Skip this if dsh is on the executable path or run via npx.
3. M-x dsh-bridge-install-plugin — install the bundled plugin into DSH.
4. Start or restart dsh web.

To remove the plugin later, run M-x dsh-bridge-uninstall-plugin.

Here is an example of dsh-bridge-dsh-command for a source checkout:

(setq dsh-bridge-dsh-command "pnpm -C /path/to/deepseek-harness dsh")

Note that ~ is not expanded, so specify the full path. Don't add an additional web argument to the end.

Manual compilation and installation

Instead of an all-in-one Emacs package, you can build and install the DSH plugin and Emacs library manually.

Build and install the DeepSeek Harness plugin

From this repository's root directory:

make build   # emits dsh-plugin/lib/index.js + lib/client.js

If you have dsh installed on the executable path, run the following commands:

# global install, from this repo root:
dsh plugin --profile web add link:./dsh-plugin
dsh web

If you have a source checkout of DSH and run it as a pnpm script (pnpm dsh web), run the following from the deepseek-harness directory instead, replacing the link: path with the appropriate path into this repo:

# source checkout, from deepseek-harness root:
pnpm dsh plugin --profile web add link:/absolute/path/to/dsh-emacs-bridge/dsh-plugin
pnpm dsh web

Install the Emacs library

Put this in your Emacs init file (~/.emacs.d/init.el or ~/.emacs), replacing the path with the actual path to dsh-bridge.el:

(load "/path/to/dsh-emacs-bridge/emacs/dsh-bridge.el")

Optionally, you can also load dsh-bridge-install.el, which contains the previously-mentioned M-x dsh-bridge-install-plugin command. But if you installed the DSH plugin directly by following the steps in the preceding section, you probably won't need these.

Usage

From Emacs, the main entry-points are these two commands:

• M-x dsh-bridge — open a transient menu for DSH commands.
• M-x dsh-bridge-list-sessions — show a list of DSH sessions.

Consider giving either of these a global keybinding, e.g.,

(keymap-global-set "C-c d" #'dsh-bridge)

Transient menu

The M-x dsh-bridge command opens a transient menu that prompts for the next command. The top line shows the session your next command will act on. The following commands are available from the transient menu:

• q — exit the transient menu.
• r — open a buffer to type in a prompt.
• s — send the region or buffer as a prompt.
• d — send the region or buffer as a draft (can still edit in DSH's web interface before submitting).
• f — fetch and display the session's latest reply.
• D — describe the session.
• t — set the default target session.
• u — clear the default target session.
• l — open the DSH-Sessions buffer.
• + — create a new session, prompting for its workspace and its title. The new session becomes the default target.

DSH-Sessions buffer

The M-x dsh-bridge-list-sessions command opens a list of DSH sessions. The default target session (if any) is marked by a * in the leftmost column, and the S (state) column shows each session's live status. The following commands are available from here:

• q — quit the window and bury the buffer.
• RET — do the next appropriate thing for the session at point. If it is running, view the current replies, if waiting for a prompt, open a buffer to type a prompt, etc.
• r — open a buffer to type a prompt for the session at point.
• f — fetch and display the output from the session at point.
• a — answer a pending user query for the session at point.
• t — set the session at point as the default target.
• u — clear the default target.
• v — toggle whether archived sessions are shown (hidden by default).
• R — rename the session at point.
• d — archive the session at point.
• + — create a new session, in an existing or new workspace (the default target is left unchanged).
• W — rename the workspace of the session at point.
• D — describe the session at point.
• g — refresh the DSH-Sessions buffer.

For a full list, see the menu bar. Other tabulated-list-mode keys are also available.

DSH-View buffer

This read-only buffer contains the model output for a DSH session. Each buffer holds one agent turn (i.e., all replies from a user prompt to an idle). It is fetched by f from the transient menu or the DSH-Sessions buffer, C-c C-f from the prompt buffer, or pushed from the web UI's "Send to Emacs" button (see below).

The following commands are available in a DSH-View buffer:

• g — re-fetch the current session's newest turn.
• r — open a DSH-Prompt buffer for the current session.
• B — branch the shown turn into a new session.
• i — receive the latest "Send to Emacs" message (see below).
• D — describe the current session.
• M-p/M-n — cycle the current session's turns (older / newer).
• l — open the DSH-Sessions buffer.
• q — quit the window and bury the buffer.

When created, a DSH-View buffer usually follows the latest turn, so that the buffer is automatically updated as more replies arrive. Walking back through older turns with M-p suspends following; cycling back to the newest turn with M-n resumes it automatically. To customize this behavior, change dsh-bridge-view-follow-at-newest.

If Markdown mode is installed, and dsh-bridge-view-gfm is non-nil, the reply is font-locked as GitHub-Flavored Markdown (the dividers use GFM horizontal-rule syntax, so they render cleanly).

Answering agent queries

If the model requests additional user input via the ask_user_question tool, the query is surfaced in the DSH-View buffer. Type a here (or in the DSH-Sessions buffer with point on the session) to open a buffer for handling the query.

In this buffer, mark the option(s) you choose with RET. You can also navigate to a question block and type your desired option's number key, or type c and write a freeform answer via the minibuffer.

To submit the answers, type C-c C-c. Alternatively, type C-c C-k to decline the query, canceling the tool call.

DSH-Prompt buffer

This buffer is used to compose a prompt, or reply, for a DSH session. It is opened by r from the transient menu, DSH-View buffer, or the DSH-Sessions buffer. You can also open it with RET from the DSH-Sessions, if the session is waiting for a prompt.

The target session affected is determined by how the buffer was invoked; for instance, r from a DSH-View buffer opens a prompt for the same session.

The following commands are available from the DSH-Prompt buffer:

• C-c C-c — send the buffer as a prompt, and pop to the DSH-View buffer to watch the reply.
• C-c C-d — push the buffer to the DSH composer as a draft.
• C-c C-a — attach a file to the prompt (see below).
• C-c C-m — set the model and reasoning effort.
• C-c C-s — rebind the buffer to another session.
• C-c C-k — erase the buffer.
• C-c C-f — open the DSH-View buffer for this session.
• C-c C-l — open the DSH-Sessions buffer.
• M-p/M-n — walk the session's prompt history.

While walking the prompt history with M-p/M-n, you may edit earlier prompts. This blocks further history navigation; to resume, you must send the prompt first, or revert with M-x revert-buffer.

When Markdown mode is installed, this buffer derives from it, so most markdown editing commands are also available.

Attachments

The C-c C-a command attaches a file to send along with the prompt. Like the analogous Message mode command, this prompts for a file in the minibuffer, and inserts a tag line into the prompt buffer:

<#attachment filename="/home/you/screenshot.png">

If you change your mind and no longer want to attach the file, just delete the tag line before sending the prompt.

From elsewhere in Emacs, you can also run this command (M-x dsh-bridge-attach-file) directly to open a DSH-Prompt buffer with the specified attachment, or M-x dsh-bridge-attach-buffer-file to open a prompt with the current buffer's file as the attachment.

Sending text from DSH to Emacs

The DSH plugin adds a "Send to Emacs" button that lets you push specific assistant messages to Emacs. This automatically pops to the DSH-View buffer in Emacs. You can use i in the DSH-View buffer (or run M-x dsh-bridge-receive) to pull the last message pushed.

Development testing

Running make test launches the standard unit test suite (Vitest for plugin, ERT for elisp). Running make integration-test performs a suite of integration tests that boots the plugin against a live DeepSeek Harness host with a mock LLM; see integration/README.md. It is not part of make test (which stays fast); run it before committing a host-plugin change and before a release.

Permissions, authentication, and failure bounds

The DSH plugin registers its routes on the DSH web server's loopback listener, and the browser plugin calls only same-origin /dsh-bridge/* routes. No third-party service is contacted.

Every /dsh-bridge route requires a shared bearer token stored at ~/.dsh/dsh-bridge-token, generated on first use in mode 0600. Emacs reads this file directly, while the browser plugin fetches it from the loopback-only GET /dsh-bridge/token route (peer- and origin-fenced).

HTTP request bodies are capped at 1 MiB; larger bodies get a 413 error. DSH-to-Emacs messages are held in a bounded outbox (100 unacknowledged entries); overflow evicts the oldest entries and is reported to Emacs, which warns on receive when entries were dropped. Naming a cold (persisted-only) session from Emacs resumes it on demand, matching the web UI; an id neither live nor persisted is 404, a subagent-owned session is 409, and a draft push fails with 409 when no browser client is subscribed. The read-only session report and the POST /dsh-bridge/fork source read are the exceptions: each observes a cold session's persisted log without resuming it.

POST /dsh-bridge/send also accepts an attachments list of absolute host-local paths and reads those files itself, so attachment bytes never travel through the 1 MiB JSON body. This is within the same bearer-token trust boundary as every other route (a token holder can already mutate sessions and, through the model's tools, read files), but it is a route-level file read, so it is stated here. The bridge and the DSH host must share a filesystem; a path the host cannot read is a 400. Attachment bytes are copied into the content-addressed store under $DSH_HOME/attachments/v1 (images as normalized images, other files verbatim), and one prompt may carry at most 20 attachments and 200 MiB per file; the image store applies its own limits (20 MiB per image, 20 images, 200 MiB of images) and reports violations as 413 or 400.

License

This software is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3, or later. See COPYING.