soyo

SOYO

Selective Observation for Yield-Aware Orchestration

SOYO is a lightweight, DSH-native video-understanding plugin. It gives a DeepSeek Harness Agent one callable tool—analyze_video—backed by a configurable local or API-based multimodal provider.

V0.1 supports two fixed worker modes:

• vanilla: ordinary provider-backed video inference;
• flashvid: local visual-token compression using the pinned upstream FlashVID integration.

SOYO is integration software, not a new compression algorithm or a general Video Agent system. V0.1 intentionally has no MCP layer, UI, memory, dynamic budget, or benchmark suite. It includes one frozen 100-question LongVideoBench validation comparison as a release check.

Status

V0.1 is a release candidate. The following paths have run successfully on a real local video:

DSH analyze_video
  -> loopback Python worker
  -> configured multimodal provider (vanilla or FlashVID)
  -> structured result
  -> DSH Agent continuation

The DSH main-Agent model is configured separately by the user. SOYO does not install or serve a main-Agent LLM.

Architecture

DeepSeek Harness Agent
        |
        | native analyze_video(video_path, question)
        v
SOYO TypeScript/Cordis plugin
        |
        | loopback HTTP/JSON
        v
SOYO Python worker — one mode per process
        |
        +-- vanilla  -> configured local or API provider
        |
        +-- flashvid -> pinned FlashVID -> local compatible checkpoint
        |
        v
answer + frames + visual tokens + timing + memory metadata

The public tool contract is intentionally small:

analyze_video(
  video_path: absolute path to an allowed local MP4,
  question: focused natural-language question
)

Mode is not a tool argument. FlashVID patches Transformers model classes globally, so V0.1 selects SOYO_MODE=vanilla|flashvid when the worker starts. Switching mode requires restarting the worker.

Requirements

The core stack is:

• Node.js 22 and pnpm;
• DeepSeek Harness 0.1.0-rc.6 / @deepseek-ai/dsh-tools@0.1.0-rc.6;
• Python 3.11;
• either a configured API provider or a compatible local multimodal checkpoint.

Model weights are not included and are never downloaded by SOYO.

Installation from source

Clone the repository and build the DSH bundle:

pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm check
pnpm test
pnpm build

Create the Python 3.11 environment:

python3.11 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/python -m pip install --upgrade pip

For API-backed operation, install the provider extra:

.venv/bin/python -m pip install -e 'python[api]'

For a local GPU backend, install the provider-specific runtime appropriate for the selected model, then install the worker's local extra:

.venv/bin/python -m pip install --no-build-isolation -e 'python[vanilla]'

For flashvid mode, install the pinned official revision over the compatible local environment without resolving FlashVID's broader dependency set:

.venv/bin/python -m pip install --no-deps --no-build-isolation \
  -r python/requirements-flashvid.txt

The pinned revision is 983cce6e30d7a8012442bfc7557d3afa61b3572d.

The upstream FlashVID package declares lmms-eval as a required dependency even though SOYO's inference path does not import or use it. The deliberate --no-deps install keeps the V0.1 runtime small and avoids installing an evaluation stack. Consequently, pip check reports the absent lmms-eval requirement in a FlashVID environment; this is a known upstream packaging limitation, not evidence that the validated SOYO inference path is missing a runtime import.

The provider uses the OpenAI-compatible Chat Completions format. This covers compatible hosted services and self-hosted gateways by changing SOYO_API_BASE_URL, SOYO_API_KEY, and SOYO_API_MODEL; credentials are read only from the environment and are never returned in metadata.

Start the worker

Choose one mode and an explicit local-video allowlist:

CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 \
HF_HUB_OFFLINE=1 \
TRANSFORMERS_OFFLINE=1 \
SOYO_MODE=flashvid \
SOYO_PROVIDER=local \
SOYO_MODEL_PATH=/absolute/path/to/local/model \
SOYO_ALLOWED_VIDEO_ROOT=/absolute/path/to/videos \
.venv/bin/soyo-worker

For API mode, set SOYO_PROVIDER=openai_compatible, omit SOYO_MODEL_PATH, and use a vision-capable model. SOYO samples the local MP4 into JPEG frames and sends those frames to the configured endpoint:

SOYO_PROVIDER=openai_compatible \
SOYO_API_BASE_URL=https://api.example.com/v1 \
SOYO_API_KEY="$YOUR_PROVIDER_KEY" \
SOYO_API_MODEL=your-vision-model \
SOYO_ALLOWED_VIDEO_ROOT=/absolute/path/to/videos \
.venv/bin/soyo-worker

Use SOYO_MODE=vanilla for the uncompressed path. The worker binds to 127.0.0.1:8765 by default and loads the model once at startup.

Useful worker variables:

Variable	Default	Meaning
SOYO_MODE	vanilla	Immutable vanilla or flashvid mode
SOYO_PROVIDER	local	local or openai_compatible
SOYO_MODEL_PATH	unset	Local checkpoint path when using local
SOYO_API_BASE_URL	https://api.openai.com/v1	OpenAI-compatible API base URL
SOYO_API_KEY	unset	API credential, supplied through the environment
SOYO_API_MODEL	unset	Provider model identifier
SOYO_ALLOWED_VIDEO_ROOT	required	Canonical root containing allowed MP4 files
SOYO_HOST	127.0.0.1	Must remain loopback in V0.1
SOYO_PORT	8765	Worker port
SOYO_DEVICE	cuda:0	Logical CUDA device
SOYO_NUM_FRAMES	8	Fixed decoded-frame request
SOYO_MIN_PIXELS	3136	Processor pixel lower bound
SOYO_MAX_PIXELS	50176	Processor pixel upper bound
SOYO_MAX_NEW_TOKENS	64	Greedy generation cap

Check readiness:

curl http://127.0.0.1:8765/health

Install the DSH plugin

With DSH already installed and its main-Agent provider configured:

dsh plugin --profile headless add .

SOYO is a standard DSH bundle. Its Cordis patch inserts soyo-dsh-plugin, which registers analyze_video through @deepseek-ai/dsh-tools.

The TypeScript side connects to http://127.0.0.1:8765 by default. Override it when needed:

export SOYO_BACKEND_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8765
export SOYO_REQUEST_TIMEOUT_MS=600000

For a local tarball install:

pnpm pack
dsh plugin --profile headless add ./soyo-dsh-plugin-0.1.0.tgz

The tarball includes the Python worker source. When installing only from the tarball, install the worker from the package extracted under the selected DSH profile's node_modules/soyo-dsh-plugin/python directory.

For example, when DSH_HOME is explicit:

export DSH_HOME=/absolute/path/to/dsh-home
dsh plugin --profile headless add ./soyo-dsh-plugin-0.1.0.tgz

.venv/bin/python -m pip install --no-build-isolation \
  "$DSH_HOME/profiles/headless/node_modules/soyo-dsh-plugin/python[vanilla]"

Install the CUDA-specific PyTorch/Torchvision wheels first, as shown above. Add the pinned FlashVID requirements from the same packaged python directory only when using SOYO_MODE=flashvid.

DSH is currently a developer preview. Some environments require explicit pnpm native-build approval for DSH's own node-pty dependency; this is a DSH installation requirement, not a SOYO runtime dependency.

Minimal use

Ask the configured DSH Agent to inspect an allowed absolute path:

Use analyze_video to answer: what is the person doing in
/absolute/path/to/videos/example.mp4?

The Agent receives a result resembling:

SOYO video analysis: The person is washing dishes in a kitchen sink.
Metadata: {"mode":"flashvid","num_frames_processed":8,...}

The underlying HTTP API remains available for diagnostics:

curl -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "video_path": "/absolute/path/to/videos/example.mp4",
    "question": "What is the person doing? Answer briefly."
  }' \
  http://127.0.0.1:8765/v1/analyze

180-second smoke/demo

Both modes ran in separate fresh processes against the same 180-second MP4, checkpoint, question, eight decoded frames, pixel bounds, and greedy generation settings.

Field	Vanilla	FlashVID
Frames processed	8	8
Visual tokens before compression	216	216
After FlashVID vision compression	216	68
After FlashVID inner-LLM pruning	216	21
Output	washing dishes in a kitchen sink	washing dishes in a kitchen sink

This table is single-run smoke/demo data, not a benchmark. The intended conclusion is only that both paths executed and returned valid results while FlashVID's observed token boundaries changed from 216 -> 68 -> 21.

Full records:

• docs/research/02_vanilla_vertical_slice.md
• docs/research/03_flashvid_vertical_slice.md

Controlled long-video comparison

V0.1 uses one deterministic, stratified 100-question subset of LongVideoBench validation: 98 unique videos, all 17 question categories, and all four duration groups. The questions came from pinned official metadata. The 4.7135 GiB of selected MP4s came from a pinned community mirror because the official release exposes only roughly 162 GB of multipart archives. All 98 mirror files matched their pinned LFS SHA-256 and decoded through Decord; byte identity with the official tar remains unverified.

Both modes used the same Qwen2.5-VL checkpoint, videos, prompts, 32-frame setting, pixel bounds, and greedy generation settings. The pinned official LongVideoBench scorer parsed every output without random fallback:

Metric, mean unless noted	Vanilla	FlashVID
Official accuracy	55/100 (55%)	47/100 (47%)
Visual tokens before compression	959.04	959.04
After vision-side compression	959.04	306.04
After inner-LLM pruning	959.04	92.40
FlashVID reduced mean visual tokens by approximately 68.1% at the vision boundary and approximately 90.4% after inner-LLM pruning. Accuracy fell by 8 percentage points on this subset. Paired outcomes were: both correct 43, vanilla-only correct 12, FlashVID-only correct 4, and both wrong 41; 80/100 predictions were identical. This negative quality result is reported directly and does not support a lossless-compression claim.

These are fixed controlled-subset results, not full-validation or leaderboard scores. The earlier MLVU Dev-98 fallback run is retained as a diagnostic record, not as V0.1's formal benchmark.

Reproducibility records:

• benchmarks/longvideobench_v0_1/protocol.json
• benchmarks/longvideobench_v0_1/subset_q_uids.json
• benchmarks/longvideobench_v0_1/mirror_files.json
• benchmarks/longvideobench_v0_1/results_20260814.json
• docs/research/09_longvideobench_v0_1.md

Limitations

• API compatibility depends on the provider's multimodal input support.
• Inputs are existing local MP4 files below one explicit allowlisted root.
• One worker processes one request at a time.
• HTTP cancellation stops the DSH-side wait but cannot preempt synchronous GPU generation.
• One process owns one mode; there is no runtime mode switching or dynamic token budget.
• SOYO does not configure or serve the DSH main-Agent model.
• DSH 0.1.0-rc.6 is a developer preview and its plugin/launcher behavior may change.
• V0.1 reports only the frozen LongVideoBench validation-100 controlled subset; it makes no full-benchmark or leaderboard claim.

Attribution and licenses

SOYO source is released under the MIT License.

FlashVID is third-party MIT-licensed work by Ziyang Fan, Keyu Chen, Ruilong Xing, Yulin Li, Li Jiang, and Zhuotao Tian. SOYO calls upstream FlashVID at pinned commit 983cce6e30d7a8012442bfc7557d3afa61b3572d; it does not present FlashVID as a SOYO algorithm.

The LongVideoBench-100 reference run used user-supplied Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct weights. Neither model weights nor DeepSeek Harness source are redistributed by SOYO.

See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for the complete attribution boundary.