DSH-better-sidebar: An Extensible Sidebar Workbench for DeepSeek Harness

What Does It Do?

DSH-better-sidebar is a DSH plugin for DeepSeek Harness that turns the right-hand sidebar into a full, extensible workbench. It solves the problem of the official sidebar being read-only and lacking Git and task views, letting you edit files, run a terminal, chat in a side thread, review Git changes, and watch sub-agent tasks in one column. Maintained by omdsh-dev under the MIT license and written in TypeScript, it was last updated in October 2026.

Core Features

• Editable code editor: keeps a CodeMirror editor with save, syntax highlighting, and preview toggling, while Markdown and HTML use the plugin's own rendering with safe Mermaid diagrams and sandboxed HTML preview.
• Enhanced file tree: lazy-loaded directory tree, live watch refresh for expanded folders, symlink detection, global filename search, drag-and-drop upload, plus Ctrl/Cmd multi-select and Shift range-select for batch actions.
• File changes panel: merges a Git view (staging, commits, history, worktrees and submodules) with a per-turn AI change view, using unified diff rendering with inline character highlighting and sensitive-content masking.
• Task management: offers a live sub-agent topology preview and a background task list with exit codes, streaming output, and forced termination.
• Side chat (beta): Codex-style side threads inherit the full main-session context, run independently, accept follow-up questions, and can be promoted to a top-level session.
• Service-based extension: exposes ctx.betterSidebar to every DSH plugin through registerTab and registerFileViewer, so built-in and third-party pages share one API.

How to Use This Plugin?

Once enabled in DSH, the right column is DSH's own native sidebar, and the plugin registers each tab type as a native tab while adding a self-drawn bottom workbench with draggable splits and per-session layout persistence. In daily use you can hover a file in the tree to insert an @file reference into the input box, right-click to open files with host-detected local apps or custom editor URL templates, and stage or commit changes from the file changes panel. A sidebar_open tool lets the model open files, folders, or web pages in the sidebar on its own; startup loads only about 325KB of core code, with the editor, Mermaid, and third-language dictionaries loaded on demand, and the interface language follows DSH.

How to Troubleshoot This Plugin?

The plugin is sensitive to the host version: on the DSH 0.1.7 line, a caret range that crosses a minor version will fail the host's startup compatibility precheck and be silently disabled on a 0.2.0 host, so pin the plugin version that matches your DSH release according to the official compatibility table. The 0.1.7 alpha releases have no installable version, so upgrade DSH to rc.1 first. If the sidebar does not appear after installation, hard-refresh the browser; a restart is only needed when the host half has been updated.