· Harness/ What thinks

DeepSeek Harness

DeepSeek Harness is a harness option for building AI agents. Everything is a plugin — the model adapter, the tool registry, the sandbox and the agent loop itself are all swappable.

Open source · can be self-hosted · SDKs for TypeScript · by DeepSeek AI · verified 2026-08-21

Official docsAdd to a stackAll harness options
· When to reach for it/ Fit
  • You are choosing a harness component — what thinks.
  • You need to run it on your own infrastructure, or your procurement process requires source access.
  • You want to start without a commercial conversation.

Worth knowing. Web UI first — `dsh web` serves on 127.0.0.1:3080 rather than taking over the terminal. Built on Cordis. Still a developer preview: DeepSeek warns of compatibility-breaking changes, so pin the version.

· What it takes to run/ Setup
Install
npx @deepseek-ai/dsh web
· DeepSeek Harness vs the alternatives/ 11 others
OptionWhat it doesLicenceSelf-host
DeepSeek HarnessEverything is a plugin — the model adapter, the tool registry, the sandbox and the agent loop itself are all swappable.Open sourceYes
Claude CodeAnthropic's coding agent — terminal, IDE and SDK, with hooks, skills and MCP built in.ProprietaryNo
Claude Agent SDKThe Claude Code loop as a library, for agents that are not about code.ProprietaryNo
Hermes AgentSelf-improving agent from Nous Research — writes its own skills from experience and carries them forward.Open sourceYes
OpenClawSelf-hosted gateway putting an agent in Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, Discord and iMessage at once.Open sourceYes
Prime AgentPrime Intellect's recursive-language-model harness — a persistent IPython kernel is the only tool, sub-agents are function calls.Open sourceYes
OpenAI Agents SDKLightweight loop with handoffs, guardrails and sessions.Open sourceNo
Codex CLIOpenAI's terminal coding agent.Open sourceNo
OpenCodeOpen-source terminal coding agent, provider-agnostic.Open sourceYes
GooseBlock's open-source on-machine agent with an extension system.Open sourceYes
LettaStateful agent server where memory is the primary abstraction.Open sourceYes
Roll your own loopNo harness. A while-loop, a model call and your own tool dispatch.Open sourceYes
· For agents/ This page, machine-readable

Every page here answers to Accept: text/markdown and returns the same content at roughly a tenth the tokens. No separate site, no toggle — same URL.

curl -s -H "Accept: text/markdown" https://newagent.build/c/deepseek-harness