dsh-netassist: DeepSeek Harness Network and Proxy Diagnostic Assistant

When developing or debugging DeepSeek Harness (dsh) workflows, network connectivity, system proxy configuration conflicts, and local Hosts file interference are common blockers. When an agent cannot access GitHub or a specific API, manual intervention is often required to investigate proxy ports, DNS resolution, and Hosts records. dsh-netassist aims to provide agents with a set of read-only network diagnostic capabilities, directly answering specific questions such as “is it reachable,” “what is the proxy status,” and “is the port alive.”

This is a DSH plugin maintained by Edge-Echo and part of the dsh-toolkit family. It uses PowerShell in Windows environments to execute a series of read-only diagnostic scripts, providing a complete diagnostic chain from DNS resolution to TCP connection to HTTPS status codes, and supporting scans of local hosts file entries for GitHub records.

Core Features¶

• GitHub connectivity check: Verifies DNS resolution and TCP port 443 reachability.
• System proxy detection: Reads proxy settings from the Windows registry (ProxyEnable/ProxyServer/ProxyOverride) and environment variables.
• Proxy port probing: Probes the liveness of common local proxy ports (10808, 10809, 7890, 7897, 8888, 1080).
• Complete diagnostic chain: For any Host and Port, runs a full-chain diagnosis from DNS to TCP to HTTPS status code.
• Hosts file conflict scan: Checks whether the hosts file contains GitHub-related domain records.

Installation and Enablement¶

Run the following commands in the terminal to install the plugin:

dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-netassist
dsh web   # 重启服务以加载插件

Typical Usage¶

After installation, the following capabilities can be invoked through natural language or tool names:

• Check GitHub reachability: “check if github.com is reachable” -> triggers net_github_status
• View system proxy: “what proxy is my system using?” -> triggers net_proxy_status
• Check proxy ports: “is my proxy running?” -> triggers net_proxy_probe
• Troubleshoot network issues: “why can’t I reach api.example.com:8443?” -> triggers net_diag host=api.example.com port=8443
• Check hosts conflicts: “any github entries in my hosts?” -> triggers net_hosts_check

Notes¶

• Platform limitation: Windows only. On non-Windows platforms, the tools will report an error (spawn powershell.exe ENOENT).
• Safety mechanism: All diagnostics are read-only operations with no write permissions. User input is passed via Base64 to prevent command injection.
• Performance: Each tool has a cold-start time of about 20 seconds. net_doctor (full-chain diagnostics) may take more than 60 seconds because multiple checks run in parallel. The default 60-second timeout of MCP clients may be insufficient, so call tools individually or adjust the timeout.
• PowerShell policy: If execution fails, check the PowerShell execution policy. Although the plugin uses -NoProfile -NonInteractive, it normally does not rely on RemoteSigned.

The plugin provides a standardized diagnostic interface to help agents quickly locate network-layer issues, making it suitable for debugging DSH workflows.

GitHub: https://github.com/Edge-Echo/dsh-netassist
NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/dsh-netassist