The **DeepSeek Harness SDK** builds agent harnesses on Cordis. The principle is simple: **everything is a plugin**. The shipped loop is one plugin, not a privileged kernel.
A harness is one [Cordis](cordis-primer.md) context. Packages contribute service keys, typed events, and disposable registrations: services expose stable calls (`ctx.llm`, `ctx.tools`, `ctx.sessions`), events provide interception and notifications (`agent/request`, `tools/pre-execute`, `session/event`), and registrations install prompt sections, tools, providers, adapters, or listeners.
Events form the service extension API; see the exhaustive [events catalog](cordis-catalog/events.md) and [producer/consumer map](event-producer-consumer.md).
- **Session events** are durable, replayable facts. Turn and step boundaries, user input, assistant output, tool calls, tool results, steering, compaction records, and tool-owned durable facts append to the session log and flow through `session/event`.
- **Agent events** carry the live `Agent` handle for status, diagnostics, prompt admission, call-config shaping, result validation, and continuation policy.
- **Capability events** belong to the seam that owns the action. `tools/*`, `llm/*`, `system-prompt/*`, `fs/*`, and `subagent/*` let policy and adapters attach without importing the loop.
Waterfall events behave like around-middleware: a listener delegates by calling `next()`; returning without it vetoes or takes over. Full rule: [Cordis waterfall semantics](cordis-primer.md#cordis-waterfall-semantics).
The shipped loop drains work, assembles requests, streams model answers, executes tools, applies continuation policy, and checkpoints state. Every pause is a service call or event available to plugins.
A **session** is one agent's append-only event log. A **turn** drains one queued batch and runs until the model stops asking for tools and no plugin requests continuation. A **step** is one model request plus the tool executions caused by that response. In the flow below ([sequence companion](agent-lifecycle.md)), quoted names are durable session events and event names are extension points.
The loop renders one prompt assembly per step. Plugins contribute ordered sections, tool schemas, and `{{name}}` variables; unknown or valueless references fail the turn instead of shipping a hole. `dsh-system-prompt` owns the harness identity and default deployment persona; an agent-scoped persona may shadow the default. The loop supplies `model` and `cwd`. See the [prompt-ownership RFC](rfc/implemented/architecture/2026-07-05-prompt-variables-and-tool-guidance-ownership.md).
Post-tool context lands after all tool results so tool-call/result adjacency stays stable. Steering drains between steps; ordinary leftover steering after a turn is re-queued as input. A terminal `agent/turn-stop` is the explicit exception: it runs after ordinary continuation and steering folding, then remains authoritative through turn close and flush so steering from those later listeners is discarded rather than becoming another step or turn; ordinary queued prompts are preserved.
The turn is the containment boundary. A throwing listener, adapter error finish, or failed step ends the current turn with an error reason and reports live diagnostics through `agent/error`; it does not kill the driver loop. `cancel()` clears queued and steering work, aborts the active model/tool boundary when possible, and records the appropriate turn end. Disposal stops the loop, awaits quiescence, unregisters the agent, and lets service disposers drain.
Every session event is turn-enclosed. Reloading a crashed session preserves the interrupted tail and closes it with a synthetic `interrupted` turn end. A failure after the durable turn has closed reports through `agent/error` only because no safe in-turn position remains. A turn ends with one `TurnEndReason` (`completed`, `aborted`, `error`, `disposed`, `max-tokens`, `rejected`, or `interrupted`); per-variant semantics are in [session.md § TurnEndReasonMap](core-data-structures/session.md#why-a-turn-ended-turnendreasonmap).
`ctx.agents` owns live agents and returns an `AgentHandle { agent, dispose() }`. `Agent` is the API other plugins drive: `send()` queues work, `steer()` injects mid-turn content, `inject()` appends context and opens a one-shot injection turn when idle, `cancel()` is the public stop primitive, and `whenIdle()` observes quiescence. The caller fiber and concrete factory provider structurally co-own programmatic lifecycles; a consumer handle is the only non-structural teardown capability, and every owner reaches the same awaited disposer.
Every live agent owns a scoped `agent.ctx`. Its registrations shadow same-named globals, receive only that agent's dispatches, and unwind with the agent. `CreateAgentOptions.setup(agentCtx)` composes the scope before publication. See the [agent-scope RFC](rfc/implemented/architecture/2026-07-08-agent-scope-contexts.md); subagent composition controls are documented [separately](rfc/implemented/feature/2026-07-12-subagent-persona-tool-filter-and-depth.md).
The session log is the source of truth. `deriveMessages()` projects session events into the `Message[]` sent to the model; raw `assistant/chunk` events stay in the log for replay and UI fidelity. Replay, fork, resume, transcript rendering, telemetry, and persistence all derive from the same event stream.
**Model-visible ⟺ logged**: the log reconstructs every request — messages at `step/start` fronted by the header's session prefix, headers by folding `request/header` — and dev invariants assert this ([reconstructability RFC](rfc/implemented/architecture/2026-07-05-reconstructable-requests.md)).
Durability is a plugin concern. Persistence backends buffer synchronous `session/event` notifications and the loop awaits a turn-end checkpoint before moving on. The `SessionPersistence` seam stores `SessionEvent` directly, with metadata in `SessionHeader`; JSONL and SQLite share one contract suite.
Messages are arrays of typed content blocks (`text`, `reasoning`, `tool-call`, `tool-result`). The union derives from the merge-extensible `ContentBlockMap`; the same pattern types `MessageSource`, `FinishReason`, `TurnTrigger`, and `TurnEndReason`. New block types are coordinated across adapters, UI bridges, compaction pricing, and persistence, so block types remain a repo-wide contract.
Streaming is a raw chunk protocol (`block-start` through `finish`) with `BlockAssembler` as the shared chunk-to-block assembler. The loop logs raw chunks while assembling them for dispatch. `LlmAdapter` is the provider seam: subclass, implement `stream()`, and register with `ctx.llm.registerAdapter(models, adapter)`. StreamChunk conventions live in [llm-streaming.md](core-data-structures/llm-streaming.md).
A swappable capability usually splits into **interface / implementation / consumer**: the interface owns its `ctx` key and events, an implementation registers a backend, and a consumer exposes model behavior through tools or prompts. Bash is the reference; the [capability graph](capability-seams.md) shows every family.
Some seams bend the template deliberately. LLM keeps interface and consumer vocabulary together because adapters are the implementations. Filesystem adds policy gates around provider primitives. Web is one service with search and fetch provider registries, so provider swaps do not rename model tools. Skills and subagents use named provider registries; local skills scan project/user roots, and other providers can add embedded or remote catalogs without registry/tool changes. Subagents spawn fresh, fork from the parent's completed-turn prefix, or use ACP children ([subagent.md](core-data-structures/subagent.md)).
`dsh-agent-core` is the default composition bundle: one plugin loading the shared spine ([README](../packages/core/agent-core/README.md)). App packages compose it with a front door and boot `bin`: `dsh-stdio-agent` for terminal REPL, and `dsh-acp-agent` for ACP over JSON-RPC stdio with no stdout logger ([ui/](../packages/ui/README.md)). `dsh-jsonrpc-agent` instead boots an external `cordis.yml`; the Python SDK injects the package default only when no explicit config channel is set and drives `dsh-jsonrpc` over line-delimited stdio JSON-RPC ([Python SDK](../python/README.md)). A deployment is a thin `cordis.yml` leaf: swappable backends, one app entry, and optional product tools ([examples/](../examples/AGENTS.md), [runnable wirings](cookbook/extension-cookbook.md#runnable-wirings), [graph atlas](graph-atlas.md)).
| Intercept prompts, requests, tool use, or continuation | listen on the relevant `agent/*` or `tools/*` waterfall; use serial `agent/turn-stop` for a monotonic terminal stop |
The [extension cookbook](cookbook/extension-cookbook.md) carries plugin skeletons and the feature-to-seam map; step-by-step guides cover [packages](cookbook/adding-a-package.md), [tools](cookbook/adding-a-tool.md), [LLM adapters](cookbook/adding-an-llm-adapter.md), and [vendored packages](cookbook/adding-a-vendored-package.md).
