DSH Math Notes Assistant (dsh-math-memory)

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A long-term math-memory agent for DeepSeek Harness that lives inside Obsidian as a right-sidebar chat panel.

A two-component repository:

1. Obsidian community plugin (id dsh-math-assistant, repo-root manifest.json + main.js): embeds dsh web in the right sidebar, detects and starts the dsh service, bootstraps the dsh-side configuration and vault templates on first run, and hosts the memory panel, capture-policy settings, and deterministic maintenance.
2. dsh plugin (npm package dsh-math-memory, dsh/): installs the same notes-assistant agent preset / profile and vault templates into $DSH_HOME.

The three install paths (native bundle / --direct offline copy / Obsidian's embedded bootstrap) produce equivalent configuration, kept conflict-free by owner markers. Installing the Obsidian plugin alone is enough; the CLI dsh-math-memory install (and uninstall) covers headless use.

Why

Mathematics learning is long-horizon accumulation: notation habits, theoretical preferences, half-finished proofs, techniques, counterexamples, and ideas all need continuous collection and polishing into a connected system. Generic chat AI treats every conversation as isolated Q&A. This plugin gives the agent cross-session layered memory (five layers + a notation ledger + memo lifecycle), unified retrieval (notes + memory in one search), and a standing protocol (AGENTS.md) so each new session starts where the last one ended.

How far this project actually gets (and what 1.0 means)

Being explicit about the boundary matters more than listing features:

• Solved: "the agent cannot remember what you asked." Raw evidence (episodes) is captured deterministically, typed atomic records carry source links, five indexed layers, unified retrieval (note_recall) in one pass, on-demand layer injection instead of dumping everything into context, plus a daily audit and a user feedback loop for deterministic upkeep. The cross-session remember / find / correct line works end to end.
• Still far off: "helping you polish a body of mathematical understanding, and building a system for invoking that understanding and your techniques." What is stored today is what you asked and what was concluded, not where your understanding stands, where it stalls, and what to practice next. The technique layer has storage and retrieval but no invocation system (when to use which card, how to judge its applicability boundary, what to switch to after a failure, how several techniques compose), and there is no active teaching loop (diagnose → hint → check → review as a long-term record) or review scheduling.
• Therefore: 1.0 is the release that actually delivers the second line. Today's 0.7.x is a prototype: the memory substrate is usable and the control surface is visible and correctable, but the "learning partner" goal is still a design generation away — see docs/handoff.md §7 and docs/memory/assessment.md for the gap list and ordering.

Features

Retrieval (v3: unified entry, coarse-filter + careful-read)

• note_recall unified search: one BM25-ranked pass over user notes AND all memory layers (hook-weighted cards, memos, topics, theorem/episode indexes); unicode-dash normalization and CJK char containment bridge word-form gaps; hits carry a coverage indicator (query-token coverage; <0.35 marks a lexical-coincidence weak signal).
• Read-verify protocol: distilled query (challenge + candidate techniques) → read the top 2-3 hits in full and judge each → on empty/weak results reformulate once → then admit "not in the vault" instead of fabricating; bounded at 2 recalls and 3 full reads per turn.
• Navigation-only injection: the system prompt carries only the navigation layers (profile/notation/topics/records/templates/episodes); content is pulled on demand; the injected section has a hard total cap (≤18000 chars; per-layer budgets in docs/memory/design.md §3).
• Supporting tools: note_search (user-note tag filter), note_links (backlinks / link-following), note_create (refuses to overwrite).

Memory (five layers + maintenance loop)

• Five layers: profile (semantic) / topics (navigation) / records (typed atomic cards with retrieval hook: blocks and verification levels ✅⚖️❓) / episodes (raw evidence, append-only) / inbox (idea memos, inbox→polishing→done).
• Notation system: memory/notation.md with adopted/candidates/rejected tables and a revision history — collect → unify → maintain; the agent proposes unifications when your notation drifts (observes first when you have no stable habit yet).
• Daily audit: deterministic scan for strong/weak/unused/duplicate-candidate/unverified cards plus structural checks (missing source / broken links / missing index rows); recall hits sync back into uses/success_rate.
• Memo reminders: stale (inbox>7d, polishing>3d) or currently-relevant memos surface for polishing, ranked by relevance × recency.
• Capture policy tiers: idea/fact/preference/structure × auto/ask/off — one gate per memory layer (ideas → inbox, facts → records, preferences → profile/notation, structure → topics/theorem index/templates/strategy). Pick them in the plugin settings or by clicking the 「捕获策略」 line in either memory panel (both write back to capture-policy.md); auto-tier writes are announced in the closing line, ask-tier proposals state what/why/where.
• Cross-session context: past dsh sessions (zstd JSONL) distilled into bounded Q&A cues, vault-filtered and excluding the live session.

Control surface (Obsidian side)

• Memory panel: a one-line status strip (profile/records/templates/topics/theorems/strategy/memos/episodes + last audit); a ⚠️ needs-you block that puts the audit's re-review / archive suggestions next to the working archive button; all five card layers in one searchable list (title/topic/type/operator); per-card ✅ confirm / ❌ wrong / stale / archive (archive asks twice) with a plain-language receipt; an episode timeline with human titles + topics (8 rows, expandable); a Chinese audit summary with the model-facing checklist folded away; edit-and-save in the panel (mtime conflict guard).
• Feedback loop: 依据的记忆：<card title> — [✅ 这条对] [❌ 这张卡有错] links in replies deterministically rewrite cards through the loopback /feedback endpoint (CSRF-token protected); note references are clickable and jump into Obsidian (/open).
• Reply-quality protocol: intuition before formalism, anchoring new material to your existing notes, difficulty adaptation, Socratic correction, low-frequency check questions.
• No @linxin666 UI plugins mounted by default (independence): the profile bundles dsh-web-app for the embedded chat UI, but mounts none of the UI plugin family that the dsh-web-all aggregate brings in (skin center / task board / SSH / aionui panel / git-graph / pet / live-stats, etc.) by default — so it has no @linxin666 UI packages to resolve and boots cleanly with or without a web profile. The skin center (skin picker + background transparency) can be optionally re-enabled from the plugin settings; it requires a web profile to mirror the @linxin666 skin packages from. If that web profile carries the @linxin666/dsh-web-all aggregate (which has shipped its own skin-center row since 0.3.20), this toggle is functionally redundant — it still covers machines that have the skin packages but not the aggregate.

Safety (fail-closed)

• Tool surface: file read/write/search + five note tools (note_recall / note_strategy / note_search / note_create / note_links) + ask_user; no shell, no web, no subagents, no delete tools. No @linxin666 UI plugins are mounted — the profile keeps the minimal agent tool surface.
• Writes confined to the vault (workspace-write); interactive escalation prompts disabled (approval: never); DSH_PERMISSION_MODE=danger-full-access only re-enables escalation prompts, the sandbox itself stays workspace-write.
• All memory lives as markdown inside the vault; archiving instead of deleting; the model may not edit policy or statistics fields.

Requirements

• Obsidian desktop; Node.js ≥ 22.5; DeepSeek Harness (npm global @deepseek-ai/dsh, verified against 0.1.5-rc.1 — see docs/dsh-0.1.5-adaptation.md for the session-format-V3 adaptation); a configured DeepSeek model.
• Default port 3180 (coexists with the regular dsh web on 3080; configurable in settings).

Install

A (recommended): install it from the community plugin browser — "Settings → Community plugins → Browse" and search DSH Math Notes Assistant — or download main.js / manifest.json / styles.css from the latest release into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/dsh-math-assistant/. First run auto-detects dsh, initializes preset/profile/templates, and starts the service.

On the store: the listing is live at community.obsidian.md/plugins/dsh-math-assistant. Updates follow the store and the plugin manager once a release exists whose tag equals the manifest.json version; no manual file replacement is needed. docs/release.md owns the release procedure.

B (CLI):

npm install -g dsh-math-memory
dsh-math-memory install --vault "<path-to-your-vault>"
dsh --profile notes-assistant --port 3180                  # start (native: the bundle provides panel/workspace, no --patch needed)

Plugin settings: port, dsh install dir, DSH_HOME, auto-start, auto-init, auto-archive (>90-day episodes), ribbon button, keep-alive on close, the skin-center toggle (advanced; the aggregate bundle already carries a skin center), sidebar performance mode (default on: the loopback proxy drops the skin's expensive effects and slows the two hot loops in the skin's client hook script — the measured cause of the sidebar stutter), sidebar skin decorations (default on; turn it off to skip the skin's client script entirely — smoothest, at the cost of the hero scene / status character), and the capture-policy dropdowns. Measurements and the full cause list: docs/memory/sidebar-performance.md.

Full guide — installation model, conflict resolution (owner markers / --force takeover), and uninstall (three-tier deletion, --purge-data confirm phrase) — in docs/installation.md.

Vault layout

vault/
  AGENTS.md                       working protocol (auto-loaded)
  .deepseek/
    memory/profile.md             semantic layer (profile)
    memory/notation.md            notation ledger (collect → unify → maintain)
    memory/topics/                navigation layer
    memory/records/               typed atomic cards (+ hook blocks)
    memory/theorems/              personal theorem index (Matlas-style)
    memory/templates/             problem-template ↔ theorem graph
    memory/episodes/              raw evidence (append-only + archive/)
    inbox/                        idea memos
    capture-policy.md             capture policy (user-maintained)
    cache/                        machine-generated caches (do not edit)

Development & quality

npm test          # syntax + 335 zero-token regression checks + 47 route-level checks + 8 real-dsh handshake checks + 32 loopback-proxy checks + installer e2e (drift detection)
npm run qa        # engine probe: 12 ground-truth recall assertions + reachability layering / pooling A/B on the real vault (zero tokens)
npm run qa:e2e    # real-session end-to-end acceptance (spends real tokens; reports API-level usage)
node scripts/build-obsidian.mjs   # rebuild main.js (required after shared-file changes)
node scripts/deploy-local.mjs     # one-shot local deployment

• Repository structure: ARCHITECTURE.md — directory responsibilities, the two-component data flow, the memory↔retrieval boundary, and the feature checklist.
• Memory knowledge base: docs/memory/ — design (implementation spec), retrieval-v3 (retrieval proposal + §7 GraphMemix intake decisions and A/B measurements), testing (QA methodology), assessment, references (paper notes), sidebar-performance (why the Obsidian panel was janky and what was measured), changelog, handoff.
• Host-version adaptation: docs/dsh-0.1.5-adaptation.md — evidence, fix list, and the reasons for what was deliberately left alone under dsh 0.1.5-rc.1 / session format V3 / dsh-web-all@0.3.20.
• Acceptance record: both probes call the SHIPPED ranking pipeline (buildRecallDoc / rankRecallDocuments / rankStrategyCards) instead of re-deriving it — seed probe 8/8 on the synthetic vault, engine probe 12/12 on the real vault (navigation indices are demoted, so the "library has no answer → weak signal" control holds). The engine probe additionally prints GraphMemix-style reachability layering (Direct / Recoverable / No access) and a signed net-recovery Δ for the bag-vs-multi-view A/B, plus target ranks — the measurement that kept multi-view max-pooling out of the default path (docs/memory/retrieval-v3.md §7.2). The real-session E2E suite covers 5 cases (including the no-answer honesty and reformulate-retry behaviors).
• Version: 0.7.8 (prototype stage; the memory architecture has no long-term field testing yet and will keep evolving).

Privacy & safety

Everything runs locally: the service binds 127.0.0.1, memory is markdown inside the vault, and the past-session index never leaves the machine.

License

MIT