DeepSeek Harness Setup

DeepSeek Harness  (command name dsh) is DeepSeek’s official open-source agent harness, built on an everything-is-a-plugin architecture — models, tools, skills, sessions, sandboxes and the UI are all swappable plugins. It calls the official DeepSeek API by default; point its model plugin at OfoxAI and the same harness reaches 100+ models.

Setup Steps

1. Install dsh

Install Node.js first. dsh ships on npm as @deepseek-ai/dsh and provides the dsh command once installed.

npm install -g pnpm          # skip if already installed
pnpm add -g @deepseek-ai/dsh
dsh --version

npm install -g pnpm          # skip if already installed
pnpm add -g @deepseek-ai/dsh
dsh --version

npm install -g pnpm
pnpm add -g @deepseek-ai/dsh
dsh --version

pnpm may warn Ignored build scripts: node-pty, koffi … during installation. Ignore it — both packages ship prebuilt binaries for every platform and need no local compilation.

To try it without installing globally:

npx @deepseek-ai/dsh web

2. Configure the OfoxAI provider

dsh keeps its configuration under $DSH_HOME — ~/.dsh on macOS and Linux, %USERPROFILE%\.dsh on Windows. Pick either route below.

dsh web

llm-pi-ai:
  providers:
    ofox:
      apiKeyEnv: OFOX_API_KEY
      api: openai-completions
      baseURL: https://api.ofox.ai/v1
      models:
        - id: deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro-0813
          name: DeepSeek V4 Pro
        - id: google/gemini-2.5-flash
          name: Gemini 2.5 Flash
    ofox-anthropic:
      apiKeyEnv: OFOX_API_KEY
      api: anthropic-messages
      baseURL: https://api.ofox.ai/anthropic
      models:
        - id: anthropic/claude-sonnet-5
          name: Claude Sonnet 5
          contextWindow: 1000000
agent-default-model:
  provider: ofox
  model: deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro-0813

3. Set the API key

apiKeyEnv names a credential rather than holding the key itself. dsh resolves it in a fixed order: the environment dsh was launched in, then $DSH_HOME/.credentials.yaml, then your project’s .env, then your home .env. If you used the Web UI, the key is already stored and you can skip this step.

export OFOX_API_KEY=<your_OFOXAI_API_KEY>

export OFOX_API_KEY=<your_OFOXAI_API_KEY>

# current session only
$env:OFOX_API_KEY = "<your_OFOXAI_API_KEY>"
 
# persistent (available in new terminals)
setx OFOX_API_KEY "<your_OFOXAI_API_KEY>"

4. Verify

dsh --profile headless "Reply with exactly: OK. Do not call any tools."

An OK back means the model layer is reaching OfoxAI. For day-to-day work, launch the web interface with dsh web, or run a single task and exit with dsh --profile headless "run the tests".

Platform differences

The configuration file contents are identical on all three platforms — only paths and environment-variable syntax differ.

Troubleshooting

TIMEOUT: Request timed out. — dsh is a Node application and does not read http_proxy / all_proxy, so a working system proxy does not mean dsh can connect. If the domain in baseURL is unreachable on your network, users in mainland China should switch to the mirror https://api.ofox.io/v1.

MISSING_CREDENTIAL — the credential named by apiKeyEnv resolved to nothing. Confirm the environment variable is live in the terminal that launched dsh, or that the key is stored in $DSH_HOME/.credentials.yaml. The other cause is picking the wrong model: the built-in deepseek-official route lists its models in the picker even with no key configured, under names close to your custom route’s.

The reply is empty and nothing errors — the easiest trap to hit: pairing api: openai-responses with an Anthropic model ends the request normally (finish reason: stop) but returns no content. Move that model to an openai-completions route, or to an anthropic-messages route pointed at https://api.ofox.ai/anthropic.

INVALID_REQUEST / HTTP 400 endpoint_not_supported — the payload reads Model '…' does not support the /v1/responses endpoint on this platform. Please use /v1/chat/completions instead. Google and Qwen models do this under openai-responses. Again, switch api to openai-completions.

Plugin loading fails with a duplicate-route error — the same route name was registered twice. Check whether both $DSH_HOME/cordis.patch.yml and settings.yaml define ofox.

Advanced: configuring through the patch layer

settings.yaml holds runtime user settings and takes effect on the next request. To change plugin composition itself — swapping or disabling a plugin — use the patch layer at $DSH_HOME/cordis.patch.yml:

- id: llm-pi-ai
  config:
    providers:
      ofox:
        apiKeyEnv: OFOX_API_KEY
        api: openai-completions
        baseURL: https://api.ofox.ai/v1
- id: agent-default-model
  config:
    provider: ofox
    model: deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro-0813

Run dsh web --dump-config to print the composed plugin tree and confirm your configuration applied.

Recommended models

For recommended models, see the Model Marketplace .