dsh-plugin-btw

A DeepSeek Harness (DSH) plugin that adds a /btw slash command — a quick side-question channel you can use mid-session, modelled after the /btw feature in Claude Code, OMP (oh-my-pi / pi-coding-agent), and JCode.

What it does

/btw <question> runs an isolated side-agent to answer your question, then surfaces the answer as a compact command-result card. It never derails the active task and never writes the exchange into the main conversation's model context.

/btw what does the useDebounce hook in src/hooks do?
/btw where is the JWT secret configured?
/side is this failing test related to my last change?

How it stays out of the main thread

• The side question is executed by a subagent (ctx.subagents.start(...)), not by the main agent's turn loop.
• DSH's command registry logs the invocation as direct surface events (command/run, command/done). These are not model-turn messages, so the side Q&A never becomes part of the main agent's future context window.
• The default fork provider seeds the child with the parent session's completed-turn history, so the answer is grounded in your current work (files, recent edits, decisions) without copying that history into the main transcript.
• The side-agent runs read-only by default: write, edit, and the cordis_* lifecycle tools are denied, so a "btw" can't silently mutate the working tree while your main task is running.

Variants

The plugin registers two commands that share one handler:

Command	Alias	Behaviour
/btw <question>	—	Fork the session context, answer read-only
/side <question>	alias of /btw	Same as /btw (matches pi-btw's /side)

Requirements (DSH host services)

• commands — human slash-command registry (@deepseek-ai/dsh-commands)
• subagents — subagent provider registry (@deepseek-ai/dsh-subagent)

The fork in-process provider (@deepseek-ai/dsh-subagent-fork-in-process) is preferred; the plugin falls back to spawn if only that is mounted. Both are part of the standard DSH host composition.

Install into a DSH composition

1. Place this package under node_modules/dsh-plugin-btw (or link it).

2. Reference it in your cordis.patch.yml (or host composition):

   - insert:
       - id: plugin-btw
         name: dsh-plugin-btw
   

3. Restart the host. Type /btw (or /side) in any session composer.

Dynamic (Cordis) install

The same plugin can be mounted at runtime as a dynamic Cordis package via cordis_define + cordis_run with inject: ['commands', 'subagents'] — no restart required. That is how it was validated in the session that produced this package.

Notes / trade-offs

• The answer appears as a command-result card in the transcript (DSH logs every command execution). The card is compact; the underlying side-agent conversation stays in its own ephemeral session and is not projected into the main agent's context. A true floating overlay (as in Claude Code) would require a Client-half UI rendered into the shell.overlay slot plus command-node suppression, which needs client-package approval and is out of scope for this host-only build.
• If your deployment mounts no subagent provider, /btw returns a clear error instead of failing silently.