@deepseek-ai/dsh-client-ui-side-tasks

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Side tasks plugin, browser half: a temporary per-session task panel beside the main conversation. The conversation header gains a 「侧边任务」 action with a live count badge; clicking it opens a right-hand overlay panel owned by the current session, which collapses to a compact top-right chip as its resting state and expands while a task is being worked on.

Each side task is a forked child session (session.fork with title incrementation) — it runs its own agent with the owner's full context, independent of the main thread. Two properties make it a temporary task rather than a fork visible in the sidebar:

• Hidden by default: the child is archived (workspace.archiveSession) right after creation, so it never appears in the workspace sidebar or the ungrouped bucket — the panel is its only surface. The forked seed context is the task's working memory, not its display: the mini conversation shows only the task's OWN messages (everything after the task's LAST session/end-seed marker — an owner that was itself resumed or forked nests earlier markers inside the seed, so the first one would leak the owner's recent messages), so a new task is just a composer ready to talk.
• Self-expiring: a task with no activity (creation, send, or a settled turn) for one hour (SIDE_TASK_TTL_MS) is deleted automatically by the apply-side sweep while the page is open; persisted activity timestamps let a refresh resume the same expiry. Running tasks are never swept. Each task row shows its own live countdown (还剩 N 分钟自动删除, ticking every second from the persisted last-activity timestamp) so the expiry is never a surprise.

The lifecycle is the plugin's core selling point: deleting a task leaves no residue. The delete button (two-click confirm) calls session.delete(childId), which disposes the host agent, removes the child from every workspace account, and erases its stored log — the task row, the panel selection, and the persisted collection entry all go with it. Closing the panel only hides the UI: tasks and their idle agents stay alive until their expiry sweep and reappear on reopen.

Slot and data architecture

Two registrations share one apply-owned controller (a register-declared store mounts under exactly one scope, so cross-scope sharing goes through the controller):

• conversation.session.header.actions (session scope, id side-task, order 30): the trigger button + count badge. Reads the store through the injected useSideTasks hook; the owner passes nothing.
• shell.overlay (root scope, id side-task-panel): the right-hand panel OR the collapsed chip. Reads the store (useSideTasks), the selected task's conversation (useTaskConversation — a derived source that follows the store's selected binding), the session list (useSessions), and the injected verbs (create/delete/send/stop/select/collapse/expand/close).

The controller owns the createSnapshotStore instance, the conversation source, per-session localStorage persistence (ids + per-task activity timestamps), the expiry sweep, and the RPC verbs; components receive everything through the inject face and never touch ctx.

Model Experience

Indirectly, through the session.fork, session.prompt, session.cancel, and session.delete verbs the panel invokes: creating a task forks a child session from the current session's prefix with an incremented title, sending a prompt queues a user turn in the task's own session, stopping cancels its running turn, and deleting removes the child's log and workspace accounts. The panel itself adds no prompt content of its own; everything the model sees comes from the user's own sends inside a task.

KV Cache effect

None from the plugin itself. Sending inside a task extends that child session's history tail like any other prompt, so admitted context can change its provider-side cache reuse; deleting a task removes its log entirely.

Known Limitations and Deferred Work

• Mini-conversation is text-only — tool calls, context injections, reasoning blocks, and other surface nodes are intentionally omitted from the compact panel; the full transcript lives in the main conversation by opening the task session normally.
• Expiry sweep runs while the page is open — a task left idle with the browser closed stays until the next page load (the persisted activity timestamps resume the countdown then); there is no host-side janitor. — the event window only backfills the current session, so the panel fetches the selected task's durable history (session.history) on selection and refreshes when a running turn settles or after a send. A reply in progress shows a 「运行中」 indicator and appears in full once the turn ends.
• Panel is single-owner — it follows the current session (useSessions.current); switching sessions re-points the panel to the new owner's collection. There is no multi-pane side-task view.
• Queued sends while running are disabled — the composer locks during a running turn instead of offering the main composer's queue semantics; a task must settle before the next prompt.

Installation

The repository ships prebuilt bundles (lib/), so a normal user installs in two steps — no build toolchain needed:

git clone https://github.com/uluckystar/dsh-client-ui-side-tasks
dsh plugin --profile web add ./dsh-client-ui-side-tasks   # or your active profile
# restart the profile for the bundle metadata to take effect

Dependency note: this plugin relies on the session.delete and session.history capabilities, which landed in the official harness in August 2025 source builds. If your DSH build predates them, the panel's history rendering and residue-free delete will not work — use a current source checkout or a released version that includes them.

Building from source (developers only)

git clone https://github.com/uluckystar/dsh-client-ui-side-tasks
cd dsh-client-ui-side-tasks
pnpm install
pnpm bundle

Note: the official @deepseek-ai/* release candidates are published to npm incrementally — if pnpm install reports a missing package (e.g. @deepseek-ai/dsh-compact), resolve it from the official harness workspace checkout or wait for the rc to be published.