1624318455/dsh-plugin-tavily

English | 中文

A Tavily-backed web search provider plugin for DeepSeek Harness (dsh).

It registers a tavily search provider into the harness's ctx.web seam, so the built-in web_search tool searches the web through Tavily — and ships a settings card in the web GUI (设置 → 插件 → 网页搜索) where you paste your API key. One install, both halves.

Features

• Drop-in search backend: select tavily and the built-in web_search tool (plus the agent's own search) is answered by Tavily — no model-facing changes.
• Settings card in the GUI: edit the API key, the default result count, and the recency window from 设置 → 插件 → 网页搜索; the key is written through the credentials service, never into a configuration file.
• Config-file control for the rest: endpoint, search depth, topic, generated answer, and the credential reference are set in cordis.patch.yml and are never overwritten by the card.
• Credential-first key handling: per-search resolution order is literal apiKey → credentials service (apiKeyEnv) → process.env[apiKeyEnv].

Install

dsh plugin --profile web add "github:1624318455/dsh-plugin-tavily#main"

During development, install from a local path instead:

dsh plugin --profile web add "file:/absolute/path/to/dsh-plugin-tavily"

The plugin registers the provider and its card only — it does not override your profile's chosen search provider.

Enable

1. Select the provider. Either set the environment variable:

   export DSH_WEB_SEARCH_PROVIDER=tavily
   

   or add a row to your profile's cordis.patch.yml (~/.dsh/profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml):

   - id: web
     config:
       searchProvider: tavily
   

2. Set the Tavily API key. Open 设置 → 插件 → 网页搜索, expand the Web search (Tavily) card, and paste the key into the API key field. The card shows whether a key is configured. Without a key the provider reports itself unavailable, so searches fail loudly with WEB_PROVIDER_CREDENTIAL_MISSING instead of silently returning nothing.

3. Restart dsh and use web_search as usual. The model-facing tool is unchanged; only the backend answering it is now Tavily.

Verify the backend is really Tavily

The web_search tool's output schema is provider-agnostic — the model never sees a provider name, and the API key intentionally lives outside environment variables, so "check the env" is the wrong probe. To confirm the active backend:

• Provider selection — ~/.dsh/profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml has the web row with searchProvider: tavily.
• Plugin loaded — ~/.dsh/settings.yaml contains a web-search-tavily section (only the plugin's installSettingsSection writes it).
• Credential in place — TAVILY_API_KEY exists in the credentials store (~/.dsh/.credentials.yaml), not in the environment.
• Result fingerprint — a Tavily result carries a generated-answer summary in content; the built-in DeepSeek provider does not produce one.

Plugin config

The GUI card edits the three values you change most often — the API key, the default result count (numResults), and the recency window (days). Every other key is set from the profile configuration and is not rendered on the card:

Key	Default	Meaning	GUI
apiKey	unset	literal Tavily API key; prefer apiKeyEnv so no secret enters configuration files	key field (via credentials)
apiKeyEnv	TAVILY_API_KEY	credential reference (environment key name) the provider resolves per search; the card's API-key field writes this reference	config only
baseURL	https://api.tavily.com	endpoint base, /search appended	config only
searchDepth	basic	Tavily search_depth: basic (faster, cheaper) or advanced	config only
topic	general	Tavily topic: general, news, or finance	config only
days	unset	recency window in days (news/finance topics)	✓
includeAnswer	true	request Tavily's generated answer, carried as the result content	config only
numResults	unset	default result count when a request omits maxResults	✓

Configuration lives in your profile's cordis.patch.yml (~/.dsh/profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml). Add a web-search-tavily row with a config block to set any key above:

- id: web-search-tavily
  name: '@dsh-external/dsh-plugin-tavily'
  config:
    searchDepth: advanced
    topic: news

The card's own saves are layered over this file: a field the card does not render is never written by it, so what you set here stays authoritative. (Values saved from the GUI land in ~/.dsh/settings.yaml's web-search-tavily section instead; the GUI is the intended editor for the three card fields.)

Settings edits apply live — the provider re-reads the section for every operation, so no restart or re-registration is needed after changing a value from the card or the file.

Platform note (web GUI card visibility)

The web GUI serves a plugin's settings section to the browser only when its namespace is on the apiproxy allowlist (WEB_SETTINGS_NAMESPACES in @deepseek-ai/dsh-host-apiproxy). As of 0.1.0-rc.6 that list is hardcoded and the "let a plugin expose its own configuration" mechanism is deferred, so a freshly installed third-party card is filtered out even though the section is registered host-side. To make the Web search (Tavily) card render, add the namespace to the allowlist in your installed copy and restart dsh:

// ~/.dsh/profiles/node_modules/@deepseek-ai/dsh-host-apiproxy/lib/index.js
// in the WEB_SETTINGS_NAMESPACES array:
"web-search-deepseek",
"web-search-tavily",   // ← add this line

The provider and all of its functionality work without this patch; only the GUI card is hidden. The patch is overwritten by pnpm install --force and by harness upgrades, so re-apply it after re-installing dependencies.

Mapping

Tavily's flat results[] maps to normalized WebSearchSources: url ← url, title ← title, snippet ← the non-blank content (entries without content are dropped), publishedAt ← published_date (news/finance topics). Tavily's generated answer (when includeAnswer) becomes the result content. A request's maxResults wins over numResults and is sent as Tavily's max_results; the seam enforces the final bound. Failures surface as the seam's WebError (WEB_PROVIDER_ERROR / WEB_ABORTED).

Development

pnpm install
pnpm run build          # tsdown → lib/index.mjs (host) + lib/client.js (browser, committed)
pnpm run typecheck      # tsc --noEmit
pnpm test               # real-API smoke: needs TAVILY_API_KEY

lib/ is committed so the plugin installs without a build step (no prepare script, no pnpm build-script allowlisting). The @deepseek-ai/* seam and framework packages are externalized — the harness provides them at runtime, declared as peerDependencies. The browser bundle (lib/client.js) is a CJS module-loader factory: it require()s only the client module table's platform packages and inlines the plugin's own card code, so it needs no extra install-time resolution. @deepseek-ai/dsh-base is a devDependency only, so the smoke test can resolve the harness runtime closure.

License

MIT