Skip to content
ShuTongBuddyDeepSeek Harness 应用开发实践

DeepSeek Harness in Practice

A hands-on handbook for building agent applications with DeepSeek Harness · By Guo Tao and Li Yongyong

Start readingDownloadsSource code

This manual is a companion reader to Large Model Agent Application Development (《大模型Agent应用开发》, Tsinghua University Press).

DeepSeek Harness (CLI name dsh) is DeepSeek’s open-source agent substrate. Its design philosophy fits in one sentence — everything is a plugin: model adapters, tool invocation, session management, even the agent loop that drives the whole thing, are all replaceable plugins.

This is a hands-on handbook for developers. It follows four threads — getting started and architecture, deployment and multi-model access, plugin development and agent construction, and real-world case studies — and uses one running example throughout: ShuTongBuddy, an exam-prep assistant for college students. Chapter 5 builds its plugin package; Chapter 8 turns it into a complete web application, ShuTongBuddy Studio.

The book is aimed at engineers, researchers and students who already program and want to get productive with agent applications quickly. You only need basic TypeScript and Python reading ability, plus some experience calling an LLM API.

Table of contents

Section titled “Table of contents”

Front matter

Section titled “Front matter”
IntroAbout the book

What this book covers and who it is for.

AuthorAbout the author

A short biography.

PrefacePreface

Why this book was written.

Part 1 — Getting started

Section titled “Part 1 — Getting started”
Ch 1Chapter 1 · Quick start

Get DeepSeek Harness running in ten minutes and complete your first agent task.

Ch 2Chapter 2 · Architecture

Microkernel, Cordis, Profile/Bundle/Patch, capability seams and the event system.

Part 2 — Deployment and models

Section titled “Part 2 — Deployment and models”
Ch 3Chapter 3 · Install and Web UI

Five run profiles, CLI syntax, the harness home directory and the security baseline.

Ch 4Chapter 4 · Multi-model access

DeepSeek V4 Pro/Flash, Kimi, and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint.

Part 3 — Plugins and agents

Section titled “Part 3 — Plugins and agents”
Ch 5Chapter 5 · Plugin development

Build ShuTongBuddy’s question bank, practice generator, mistake gate, review planner and tutor plugins.

Ch 6Chapter 6 · How agents work

Turns and steps, prompt assembly, the tool system and PTC, context engineering, subagents.

Part 4 — Case studies

Section titled “Part 4 — Case studies”
Ch 7Chapter 7 · Study-material audit agent

From task definition to batch headless runs, plus a custom material-stats tool.

Ch 8Chapter 8 · ShuTongBuddy Studio

Integrate the plugins into a full web exam-prep assistant (FastAPI + SSE).

Epilogue and appendices

Section titled “Epilogue and appendices”
EpilogueEpilogue

Agent engineering and where it is heading.

AppendixAppendices

Command reference, key file locations, settings.yaml fields, troubleshooting and glossary.

Translation status: the site chrome, front matter and utility pages are available in English. The eight chapters are still Chinese only and fall back to the original text with a notice — translation is in progress.

Read online · Downloads · Contact: guotao3s@163.com