DSH Cowork MCP
An MCP server that gives any agent read/write access to office documents and Jupyter notebooks, with stable cell and shape addresses, bounded windows, and safety safeguards.
README
DSH Cowork
READ + WRITE for office documents and Jupyter notebooks inside DeepSeek Harness — and anywhere else your agent runs.
DSH Cowork adds first-class document handling to coding agents:
| Format | Read | Write (v1) |
|---|---|---|
| xlsx spreadsheets | ✅ bounded, cell-addressed windows | ✅ create + edit by cell ref |
| ipynb notebooks | ✅ cells + inline outputs | ✅ create + edit by cell index |
✅ text windows (pages) |
— (v2: form-fill) | |
| docx | ✅ paragraphs + word count | — (v2: generation) |
| pptx | ✅ slides + shape ids | — (v2: generation) |
中文版见 README.zh.md.
Why
DeepSeek Harness's built-in read is UTF-8 text only — it cannot open a
spreadsheet, a PDF, a slide deck, or a notebook. Claude Code reads PDFs and
notebooks natively; Codex has nothing. DSH Cowork closes that gap as an
out-of-tree plugin (no fork, no PR needed — the ecosystem path
CONTRIBUTING.md recommends).
Two ideas make "Cowork = READ + WRITE" coherent instead of two separate tools:
- Stable addresses.
doc_readreturns cell refs for xlsx (A1,C12) and shape ids for pptx —doc_writeconsumes them. Line numbers cannot address binary formats; addresses can. - Bounded windows, explicit truncation. Every read is capped
(pages / rows / slides / cells / bytes). Silent truncation is the cardinal
sin: a
> Truncated:notice always tells you the window was cut short.
Packages
| Package | What it is |
|---|---|
packages/core |
Pure TS, zero DSH deps: sniff → extract → build, windowing, safety caps |
packages/dsh |
DSH bundle: doc_read / doc_write tools (install with dsh plugin add) |
packages/mcp |
MCP server over stdio — for Codex, Claude Code, any MCP client |
packages/cli |
doc-read / doc-write binaries + SKILL.md (the pi harness adapter) |
packages/chatnode-wechat |
DSH bundle: chat with / monitor / approve your DSH agents from WeChat (iLink gateway + conversation node) |
Install into DeepSeek Harness
# GitHub delivery (not published to npm)
git clone https://github.com/Jesse-njx/dsh-cowork.git
cd dsh-cowork
pnpm install # installs deps and builds all packages (prepare)
dsh plugin --profile <your-profile> add ./packages/dsh
Then doc_read / doc_write are available to the model. (A live agent
session also verifies: ask the model to doc_read an .xlsx.)
Configure (all optional, sensible defaults):
# in your profile's cordis.patch.yml, override the cowork-docs row
- id: cowork-docs
name: '@dsh-cowork/plugin'
config:
maxInputBytes: 67108864 # 64 MiB
maxOutputBytes: 262144 # 256 KiB model-facing window
maxDecompressedBytes: 536870912 # zip-bomb guard (512 MiB)
maxZipEntries: 4096
maxPages: 20
maxSheetRows: 200
maxSheets: 1
maxSlides: 20
maxCells: 200
Use from any agent (MCP)
# Codex / Claude Code MCP config
# { "mcpServers": { "cowork": { "command": "node", "args": ["<repo>/packages/mcp/lib/index.js"], "cwd": "<your working dir>" } } }
# or the plain CLI
doc-read report.xlsx --sheets Data --rows 50
doc-write edit report.xlsx --spec edit-spec.json
Safety model
- Zip bombs: entry-count + decompressed-size caps on every OOXML archive, checked before any codec expands bytes.
- Macros:
.xlsm/.docm/.pptm(anything withvbaProject.bin) are rejected outright — Cowork never reads or writes macro formats. - Read-only mode: in
read-onlysandbox mode,doc_writeis hard-blocked whiledoc_readstays available. - Edit guards:
doc_writeedit refuses unless the file was read this session (expected_version), and optionally fails on content change (expected_sha256) — a hash-check on every edit. - No silent overwrite: creating over an existing file requires having read
it (DSH) or
force(CLI/MCP). - Atomic writes: temp file + rename, never a partial target.
- Stale formulas: edited xlsx sheets get cached formula results cleared so Excel / LibreOffice recalculate on open (exceljs never recalculates).
- Untrusted input: formulas, hidden sheets, and speaker notes are treated as data, surfaced with the extraction, never executed.
Architecture
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ @dsh-cowork/core │
│ sniff → readDocument / writeDocument → caps │
└───────┬──────────────┬──────────────┬────────┘
│ │ │
┌──────────▼───┐ ┌───────▼──────┐ ┌────▼───────┐
│ packages/dsh│ │ packages/mcp │ │ packages/cli│
│ DSH bundle │ │ MCP stdio │ │ + SKILL.md │
└──────────────┘ └──────────────┘ └────────────┘
The DSH bundle routes reads through ctx.fs (bounded readBytes,
sandbox-aware resolution, fs/observed events) and performs atomic byte
writes itself because the fs service is text-only — re-observing the real
post-write version so the built-in policy machinery stays coherent.
Development
pnpm install
pnpm -r build
pnpm -r test # core 35 + plugin 15 + cli 6 + mcp 7 tests
- Fixtures:
node packages/core/scripts/make-fixtures.mjs(needs macOScupsfilterfor the PDF; skip otherwise). - Node 20+; tests run on Node's native TS type-stripping.
Roadmap
- v1 (this repo): read all five formats; write xlsx + ipynb.
- v2: ipynb write polish, docx/pptx generation, PDF form-fill (pdf-lib), PDF page-render-to-image for vision models, docx raw-OOXML edit.
- Ship:
dsh-pluginGitHub topic, awesome-list entry, Discussions post.
Contributing
This is a dsh-plugin-topic project. Issues, PRs, and Discussions welcome —
and per deepseek-harness CONTRIBUTING.md,
associate your own plugins with the dsh-plugin topic too.
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