dsh-free-subagents: A DSH plugin that picks free-tier models for DeepSeek Harness subagents

What Does It Do?

Free Subagents is a DSH plugin for DeepSeek Harness that routes ordinary subagents and Agent Teams to connected free-tier models while the main agent keeps its own selected model. It solves the problem of child tasks hitting paid models or failing outright when a quota runs out: routes are chosen by task preference, observed response time and reliability, and a quota failure moves the request to another approved route before any output begins. It is maintained by boldandigital under the MIT license and written in JavaScript.

Core Features

• Free-tier model pool: supports OpenRouter :free models only, plus Google and NVIDIA, and never substitutes an unapproved or paid fallback.
• Per-task preference strength: set Low, Medium or High for General, Coding, Research, Reasoning and Quick tasks, matching the 0–10 scores the router ranks on.
• Per-route reasoning effort: the selector lists exactly the levels a model declares in the DSH registry, and a route whose model lacks the chosen level is skipped rather than called, so an unsupported level cannot break a child request.
• Quota-aware failover: exhausted routes are parked and stay parked across restarts, with cooldowns shared between separate processes.
• Privacy-friendly ledger: records model identities, cooldowns, approximate counters and timings without prompts or keys, stored locally by default.

How to Use This Plugin?

Connect providers in DSH's normal Models settings first, then open Settings → Free Subagents or Plugins → Free Subagents, pick a provider and model, confirm its free allocation, add it and save. A fresh distribution starts with an empty pool, and an empty or fully disabled pool blocks child requests, so add at least one route before relying on it. Children then select free-auto/auto through the public agent APIs to use the free routes. Saving applies to subsequent calls only, active calls keep their starting settings, and drafts are page-local, so save before leaving the page.

How to Troubleshoot This Plugin?

If child requests are blocked, check whether the free pool is empty or every route is disabled, then add and enable at least one route. If a route is skipped, its model likely does not declare the chosen reasoning level; pick a declared level or Provider default instead. If a save is rejected, a conflicting edit occurred, so reload the saved settings and try again. Exhausted routes stay parked until their cooldown ends or the global attempt and cooldown limits are adjusted.