Ruiming-cn/dsh-ask-in-sidebar

dsh-ask-in-sidebar

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A DeepSeek Harness (DSH) web plugin that lets you select text in an assistant answer and ask questions about it in an ephemeral right-side panel, using the main conversation's existing context without modifying or reloading it.

Features

• Select any text inside an assistant answer in the main DSH conversation.
• A floating Ask in Sidebar action appears next to the selection.
• Clicking it opens a right-side panel with:
  • the quoted selected text,
  • a question/composer input,
  • a running discussion transcript,
  • live streaming output,
  • a collapsible thinking process,
  • timing metadata (time to first thought, first token, total duration, and token usage when available).
• Assistant answers are rendered as safe Markdown: headings, lists, inline code, code blocks, blockquotes, links, and tables.
• The first question is answered from a snapshot of the main conversation's existing LLM message history plus the quoted text.
• Follow-up questions remain inside the same ephemeral sidebar discussion.
• Closing the panel discards the sidebar discussion and its in-memory host snapshot.
• Starting a new ask by selecting different assistant text creates a fresh discussion with a fresh main-conversation snapshot.

How it preserves the main conversation

• The host only reads the main session's already-derived LLM message history and latest request header. It does not index, scan, summarize, or reload the project.
• The plugin registers no tools, opens no new DSH session, and never appends messages to the main session.
• The sidebar transcript lives in browser memory for the lifetime of the panel and in a short-lived host-side in-memory snapshot for the same discussion. Both are removed on close/discard or after a TTL.
• There is no persistent side-session archive, no history tree, and no workspace write path.

Installation

Requirements: a local DSH web profile with Node.js 20+.

# one-command install from GitHub (replace "web" with your profile name if needed)
dsh plugin --profile web add github:Ruiming-cn/dsh-ask-in-sidebar

# or install the pinned GitHub release tarball
dsh plugin --profile web add https://github.com/Ruiming-cn/dsh-ask-in-sidebar/archive/refs/tags/v0.2.0.tar.gz

# or build from a local checkout and install it
npm run build
dsh plugin --profile web add /path/to/dsh-ask-in-sidebar

The plugin is also compatible with the DSH super-injector / dev hot-inject workflow: build lib/ with npm run build, then inject or link the package into the target profile. The package includes:

• lib/index.js – host half (HTTP endpoints)
• lib/client.js – browser half (selection action + sidebar panel)
• cordis.patch.yml – stable bundle-layer insert
• package.json dsh.bundle and dsh.client metadata

Usage

1. Open a DSH web conversation.
2. Select a portion of an assistant answer.
3. Click Ask in Sidebar.
4. Type a question such as "Why is it done this way?" and press Enter or click Send.
5. Read the answer in the panel and ask follow-up questions as needed.
6. Close the panel at any time to return to the main conversation.

Configuration

There is no plugin-specific configuration. The sidebar uses the main conversation's current provider/model route; if no request/header is available, it falls back to the live agent's options, then to the first configured LLM provider. The sidebar uses a small dedicated tool-less system prompt so it answers from the supplied context instead of trying to use the main agent's tools.

Context snapshot boundaries

• A snapshot is taken when the first question of a sidebar discussion is submitted. It contains the main session's derived LLM messages at that moment and the latest request header.
• Follow-up questions in the same panel reuse that same snapshot plus the sidebar's own completed history.
• The main conversation may continue to change while the panel is open; the open sidebar discussion does not automatically pick up those later main messages.
• Starting a new ask (a new selection + panel) takes a new snapshot of the then-current main conversation.
• Sidebar context never carries over between separate asks unless the user is explicitly continuing in the same open discussion.

Limitations

• The Markdown renderer is intentionally lightweight; it does not cover every Markdown extension (nested tables, footnotes, task lists, etc.).
• The plugin does not provide tools to the sidebar model, so it cannot call host tools or mutate the workspace from the panel.
• Model context follows the main session. Very long main conversations may produce large sidebar requests because the full derived history is reused.
• Ephemeral snapshots are process-local. A host restart drops them; a follow-up after a restart falls back to a current-main-context snapshot.
• The panel is a plain-DOM overlay, not a DSH native slot. It follows the conversation DOM contract used by the current web UI (assistant rows expose data-chat-flow-kind="assistant-step").

Development

npm test        # unit tests for the host core
npm run build   # copy src/ -> lib/
npm run check   # test + build

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Suggested repository tags when publishing: dsh, dsh-plugin, deepseek-harness, sidebar, ask-in-sidebar, context.

Release workflow: see RELEASING.md.

Credits and acknowledgements

• DeepSeek Harness (MIT) provides the DSH plugin, session, LLM, and web runtime this plugin runs on.
• The host-side HTTP route + same-origin guard pattern and the browser window.__ModuleLoader__ / plain-DOM injection pattern are informed by the existing MIT-licensed DSH plugins:
  • dsh-more-session-operations
  • dsh-better-at
• No third-party code is copied into this repository. The implementation is original and attributed to the DSH ecosystem where API shape or patterns are derived from it.