dsh-herdr-site

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What it does

Herdr is a terminal workspace manager for AI coding agents. It only recognizes agents found by its built-in detectors (opencode, claude, codex, ...); dsh/cc-tui is not on that list, so a dsh pane shows up in Herdr as a plain terminal process — no state, no panel jump, no --wait support.

This plugin reports the dsh agent's state to Herdr over the official custom-integration protocol (pane report-agent / pane release-agent):

• working while a turn is running
• idle when no driver is active
• blocked when the model is parked on an ask_user_question, waiting for input

dsh itself only reports running/idle, so the blocked state is the main reason to use this plugin: the moment the model waits on you shows up in Herdr instead of looking like it's busy. It is derived from the session event stream (ask_user_question tool/call / tool/result), keyed by callId, so replayed or out-of-order events stay consistent.

With state reported this way, Herdr's panel jump and --wait also work for dsh panes. An optional blockMessage can be attached to the blocked report to show why the agent is waiting.

Demo

Lifecycle recording (captured with asciinema): the pane shows working while a turn runs, flips to blocked when the model stops on an ask_user_question, and recovers once the answer is given.

State mapping

dsh signal	Herdr state
agent/status = running (turn in progress)	working
agent/status = idle (no active driver)	idle
ask_user_question pending (model waits for input)	blocked

How it reports

State reports go through Herdr's custom integration protocol:

"$HERDR_BIN_PATH" pane report-agent "$HERDR_PANE_ID" \
  --source custom:dsh-herdr-site --agent cc-tui --state <working|idle|blocked> \
  [--message …] [--seq N]

pane release-agent is called when the fiber is disposed, so no stale entries remain. Reports carry a monotonic sequence number and repeated states are deduplicated. Outside a Herdr pane the plugin is a no-op: nothing is spawned, nothing is read.

Compatibility

• Herdr: uses the official custom-integration protocol (Integrate your own agent), tested against herdrdev/herdr v0.8.0. Any version that implements pane report-agent / pane release-agent works.

• DSH: works with both the cc-tui and dsh-tui profiles — the plugin only hooks the session event bus and is independent of the surface.

• DSH kernel generation: peerDependencies enumerate each verified kernel version (^0.1.0-rc.6 || ^0.1.1-rc.2 || ^0.1.2-rc.1), measured 2026-09-07 against both in-use generations in isolated homes:

  kernel	host entry loads	apply runs	session/event + agent/status register
  0.1.1-rc.2	✅	✅	✅
  0.1.2-rc.1	✅	✅	✅

  Verified by a probe printed inside apply — "no error" alone would not prove the plugin was actually activated, since a bundle whose patch is not layered in is skipped silently. No code change was required: the plugin uses only ctx.on(...), ctx.effect(...) and process.env, no single-generation API. When upstream ships a new rc, add it to the enumeration — node-semver does not treat a prerelease as satisfying any range unless the comparator carries the same [major,minor,patch] tuple, so ^0.1.1-rc.2 does not match 0.1.2-rc.1 (not even * does). A missing entry makes the installer resolve a second copy of the package next to the host's.

Known edges:

1. The dsh-tui profile does not ship the ask_user_question tool, so the blocked state never fires there (working/idle reporting is unaffected).
2. The agent label reported to Herdr is fixed at cc-tui.

Install

Prerequisites: a working dsh installation with the dsh-cc-tui/dsh-base profile. The plugin declares the profile's packages (@deepseek-ai/cordis at ^4, plus dsh-session and dsh-agent at each verified kernel generation — see Compatibility) as peer dependencies, supplied by the host profile.

From npm (recommended — prebuilt, no approval needed):

dsh plugin --profile cc-tui add dsh-herdr-site

Or install from GitHub:

dsh plugin --profile cc-tui add github:WuJiaoJue/dsh-herdr-site

The package ships a dsh.bundle.patch manifest, so the installer adds it to the profile's bundle layer stack automatically, and cordis.patch.yml inserts the plugin into every surface the profile boots. Repeat for any other profile you use (e.g. dsh-tui).

Verify:

dsh --profile cc-tui --dump-config | grep -A2 herdr-site

Installing from a local checkout also works: dsh plugin --profile cc-tui add /path/to/dsh-herdr-site

Configuration

Optional blockMessage, sent with the blocked report:

# in the profile's cordis.patch.yml, or a --patch overlay
- id: herdr-site
  config:
    blockMessage: '模型等待你的回答'

Build & test

npm install            # dev: @types/node
npm run build          # emits lib/
npm test               # behavioral assertions against a stub herdr CLI
npx tsc --noEmit       # type check

Git installs need no build step: lib/ is committed. pnpm blocks prepare scripts by default, so relying on an install-time build would break installs out of the box.

test/smoke.mjs runs the compiled plugin through the full lifecycle on a real cordis context — working/blocked/idle transitions, dedup, seq ordering, unrelated tool results, release-on-dispose — asserting every emitted CLI invocation against a stub herdr binary.

Local development notes

Developing against a live profile with a plain file: dependency has two gotchas (both encountered in practice):

1. A file: dep copies content at install time — re-run pnpm install in the profile after every rebuild, or the profile keeps running the stale copy.

2. With the dependency installed as a bundle layer and a manual insert row, bare-name activation was silently skipped; pointing the insert row's name: at the absolute lib/index.js path is the reliable dev-only wiring:

   - insert:
       - id: herdr-site
         name: '/absolute/path/to/dsh-herdr-site/lib/index.js'
         config: {}
   

   If you take this route, also remove the package from the profile's dsh.profile.bundles list so the two inserts don't conflict.

Neither applies to the standard dsh plugin add flow described under Install, which resolves the bundled patch's bare package name correctly.

Limitations

• Herdr's automatic process detection still won't recognize a dsh process as an agent on its own (that requires a Herdr-bundled detector update). This plugin reports state through the custom-integration path, which gives Herdr correct working/idle/blocked, panel jump, and wait without a detector.
• The optional --agent-session-id reference is not wired, so Herdr's pane/agent APIs don't expose the linked dsh session id. Automatic session restore would additionally require Herdr to know how to launch dsh, which is out of scope here. State reporting works regardless.

License

MIT