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News · DeepSeek · 2 min read

Event date: · Published:

DeepSeek ships the first GitHub release of Harness, its open-source plugin-based agent app

On August 17, 2026, DeepSeek published the first GitHub release of Harness, an open-source, plugin-based agent app in public preview worldwide that runs as a desktop app or a web UI.

Archive entry: this covers an event from August 17, 2026, and we published it on November 8, 2026. The details come from sources dated at the time and may have changed since.

On August 17, 2026, DeepSeek published dsh-v0.1.0-rc.7, the first release of DeepSeek Harness listed on the DeepSeek Harness GitHub releases page. Harness is an open-source, plugin-based agent app that was in public preview worldwide. DeepSeek's Harness pages printed no launch day, so this record uses the date of the first GitHub release.

What DeepSeek Harness offered

  • Plugin architecture: it was built on Cordis's everything-is-a-plugin architecture, with composable plugins that extend what agents can do.
  • Ways to run: as a desktop app or as a web UI launched from code, with desktop builds for macOS (Apple silicon) and Windows (64-bit).
  • Creator mode: a mode that builds plugins through chat.
  • Official plugins: Agent teams, Auto approval review, Scheduled tasks and Voice input (all experimental), plus Terminal, Agent loop and Subagents.
  • Scope: the product page covered everyday work, coding, research and background tasks, with developer tools to inspect traces.
  • License and status: the repository deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness was MIT-licensed. The product page said Harness was in preview with evolving core plugins and APIs, and the API docs called it a developer preview for agent harness developers worldwide.

What it means for people building with AI

Developers got an MIT-licensed, plugin-based agent app from DeepSeek. According to the Chinese version of DeepSeek's August 13 V4-Pro general availability post, the company also used Harness minimal mode to benchmark DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813 on Code Agent tasks. Because the core plugins and APIs were described as evolving, anyone building on them should expect changes during the preview.

Release history and sources

DeepSeek created the repository on August 13, 2026. When checked on November 7, 2026, it listed 37 prereleases, from dsh-v0.1.0-rc.7 (published August 17, 2026) to dsh-v0.2.2-rc.1 (November 4, 2026), and had 275,727 GitHub stars. The preview status is described on DeepSeek's Harness product page and in the DeepSeek API docs.

Sources

Written with AI assistance, strictly from the sources listed above. Before it went live, automated checks verified its dates, sources and every language edition.

DeepSeek ships the first GitHub release of Harness, its open-source plugin-based agent app | vibecoding.inc