dsh-auto-workspace

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Codex-style project-less chats for the DeepSeek Harness.

Click "new session" without picking a project and you just start typing. The plugin gives that chat its own private working directory, so the agent's file tools and shell commands run there — and when you come back to the chat later it keeps working in the same place. Nothing is added to the sidebar's project list.

What it changes

DSH resolves a session's working directory in exactly one place:

// @deepseek-ai/dsh-api-session-controller
const cwd = workspace?.path ?? request.cwd ?? this.defaultCwd

this.defaultCwd is the Host process's own process.cwd(). The GUI always sends a workspaceId, so that fallback is normally dead — but there was no way to not pick a project, and any other caller creating a chat without one would silently inherit the directory DSH was launched from.

This plugin takes over that one fallback and nothing else.

Directory	~/Documents/DSH/<YYYY-MM-DD>/chat-NN/ (%USERPROFILE%\Documents\DSH on Windows)
Grouping	Sessions stay out of the project list; DSH groups them under its native "Ungrouped" bucket
Resume	The directory lives in the session's own cwd header, so reopening a chat reuses it; files persist
Inheritance	An explicit project wins. "New session" in a project stays in that project; in a project-less chat it stays project-less
Entry	Hovering the blank-chat hero's project chip swaps its folder glyph for a circular clear badge — click it to leave the project. The picker menu also offers Work without a project. With no project selected the chip reads Choose workspace and no badge appears
New-chat screen	A project-less chat keeps DSH's own "not started yet" Hero — fish, headline, chip row, agent-preset control — because a client-only sentinel Workspace gives the composer its title
Cleanup	Nothing is deleted. A directory is only reclaimed when its session creation failed before anything could be written

Install

The package is a DSH bundle: package.json declares dsh.bundle.patch, so installing it appends the bundle to the profile's dsh.profile.bundles and activates its row.

dsh plugin --profile <profile> add github:Castor6/dsh-auto-workspace

<profile> is the profile whose GUI should get the plugin — the Desktop app's is desktop. https://github.com/Castor6/dsh-auto-workspace works as a spec too.

Or from the GUI's Plugins page, or with the plugin_manager tool (install_bundle). Both halves ship in one package: the Host half is the entry module, the browser half is exports["./client"] plus the dsh.client declaration. Reload the page afterwards so the client bundle enters the boot graph.

Installing a local checkout

What you want while developing it. A local spec must be an absolute path — a relative one is rejected, because it would resolve against the profile rather than your shell:

dsh plugin --profile desktop add /absolute/path/to/dsh-auto-workspace

That records a link: dependency, so the plugin keeps loading from the checkout: the browser half is re-read on every page load, and Host-half edits take effect on the next launch.

Configuration

Set on the plugin's loader row in the profile patch (~/.dsh/profiles/<profile>/cordis.patch.yml):

- id: auto-workspace
  config:
    root: '/Volumes/Work/DSH'   # default: <home>/Documents/DSH
    directoryPrefix: 'chat'     # default: chat  →  chat-01, chat-02, ...
    enabled: true               # default: true

<root>/.dsh-auto-workspace.json maps session ids to directories. It is a cache: delete it and the plugin rebuilds it from each session's persisted header. Deleting the whole root removes every project-less chat's files.

How it works

Host half (lib/index.js, Node builtins only — a link:-installed plugin loads through its real path, where no node_modules exists):

• Wraps ctx.sessionController.create. Requests naming a workspaceId or an explicit cwd pass through untouched; a request naming neither gets a directory from the allocator. mkdir without recursive is the atomic reservation, so concurrent creates cannot collide.
• SessionHeader.cwd is immutable once written, so a directory is named once and never renamed — that is why the day folder plus chat-NN is fixed at creation.
• The persisted header is the authority for resume: resumeObserved reads header.cwd and rejects a session that has none, so injecting a directory at creation is what makes project-less chats durable.

Browser half (lib/client.js, hand-written lazy-CJS bundle — no build step; react, react-dom and @deepseek-ai/dsh-client-ui-primitives are shell-provided seed modules):

• Occupies conversation.hero.workspace at priority: -1 to shadow the shipped picker for that single seat (the default priority is 0). The project list, selection check and folder-error dialog are preserved.
• Adds the clear badge. The shell renders the project chip and gives it no slot, so the badge replaces the chip's folder glyph on hover: a document-level pointer watch finds the chip structurally — it is the sibling immediately before this plugin's own slot anchor, which the framework renders as div[data-slot="conversation.hero.workspace"] with display: contents — hides the glyph, and overlays a badge centred on its measured rect, drawn smaller than the glyph box because a filled circle reads heavier than the line art it replaces. Nothing keys off a label, so it survives a language switch. The picker's footer gains a Work without a project row beside Add folder. Neither affordance exists while no project is selected; a chip that cannot be located at all leaves an inline badge instead.
• Folder adoption calls ctx.uiWorkspace.pickDirectory() — exactly what the shipped …directoryFlow occupant resolves to. It cannot be delegated to that hole: a slot occupant may only render child slots it declared itself, and a child slot name may be declared once, so a shadowing occupant can never render a hole the shipped registration declared.
• Keeps the Hero alive with a sentinel Workspace. Shipped DSH offers a usable composer only to a Session that belongs to a Workspace: ConversationMainPanel disables it while chipTitle === undefined, and chipTitle is only ever a Workspace title. Putting the session under a real Workspace is exactly the sidebar project this plugin must not create, and it would also move the chat out of Ungrouped. So the browser projection appends one sentinel Workspace — client-only, never registered on the Host, carrying no Sessions — and the Hero's own picker callback selects it, which is what gives chipTitle a value. It is projected only while the main Session is project-less, so navigating to a project drops it and the panel clears the stale selection by itself. That sentinel necessarily reaches the sidebar's group list, which renders a row for every Workspace including empty ones; that single row is hidden by a mutation-observed display: none.
• Falls back to the composer override. If the sentinel cannot be installed (an unwritable store) the plugin notices and instead reports a project-less session as content-bearing (blank: false, awaitingFirstTurn: false) through its per-session shell snapshot, which renders the ordinary active composer. The chat stays usable; only the Hero is lost. Only that snapshot is touched — the session list keeps the real blankness, so sidebar visibility, the native blank-session reuse and this plugin's own reuse keep shipped behaviour.
• Wraps ctx.uiWorkspace.startSession so a project-less current session stays project-less instead of falling back to the most recently active project.
• Bridges the "Ungrouped" group header's new-session button. Shipped DSH renders that button but its handler is if (group.workspaceId !== void 0), and that bucket has no workspace id, so it is inert. There is no slot inside a group header, and replacing sidebar.workspaces would mean reimplementing the whole browser; instead a capture-phase listener matches the button by the accessible name the same locale service produces. A renamed label or a restructured header stops matching and native behaviour returns.

Limitations

• The Host wrap and the client patches reach into package internals (sessionController.create, uiWorkspace.startSession, sessions.binding's snapshot store) rather than a published extension point. All of them are defensive: if the shape changes the plugin logs a warning and stays inert instead of breaking the app.
• The hero picker occupant shadows shipped UI. A DSH release that redesigns the picker needs this plugin re-checked.
• chat-NN numbering is per day and best-effort: removing a day folder makes the numbers reusable, so numbering is not monotonic over time.
• Project-less sessions appear under DSH's native "Ungrouped" group. They are never registered as projects.
• The sentinel Workspace is hidden from the sidebar by matching its label text and its container's stable groupSection class-name suffix. Should a DSH redesign break either, one empty project row titled Choose workspace becomes visible — cosmetic only. Flipping HERO_FOR_PROJECT_LESS to false at the top of lib/client.js removes the sentinel entirely and returns to the composer override; the client bundle is re-read on every page load, so a refresh applies it.