Quick start

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This guide gets an agent running in five minutes.

Prerequisites

Node.js ^22.19 or >= 24
pnpm 11 through Corepack
A DeepSeek Platform API key

node -v
corepack enable
pnpm -v

Step 1: install and configure the API key

git clone https://github.com/deepseek-harness/deepseek-harness.git
cd deepseek-harness
pnpm install

Create the gitignored repository-root .env:

DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=sk-your-key-here

Step 2: run one Headless task

Run a non-interactive task and print its final answer:

pnpm run demo:headless "summarize the architecture of this workspace"

Headless runs one complete model/tool turn, persists the session, prints the result, and exits. Use --output-format stream-json when you need the canonical event stream.

Step 3: use the TUI

Start the interactive coding agent:

pnpm run demo:tui

The full-screen agent can read and write files, run commands, delegate subtasks, and track a plan. Try: Create hello.js in the current directory, print "Hello from Harness!", and run it.

What happened

headless-agent uses the @deepseek-ai/dsh-cli-demo app; the interactive dsh surface instead composes apps/cli/config/base.cordis.yml with the tui.cordis.yml overlay and no app bundle. Both load the same providerless agent spine, while their cordis.yml files select the DeepSeek model and capability plugins appropriate to each surface.

Next steps

Configuration — understand the cordis.yml format
Develop a plugin — build your own tool or backend

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