Tick for DeepSeek Harness

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Give an agent another step — without giving it another task.

/tick is a bounded, auditable time-step primitive for DeepSeek Harness. It lets an already-settled session continue into one more ordinary model turn, then another, without inventing a new goal or steering the active turn.

natural conversation  -> settled
/tick 3               -> control plane only; the model never sees the command
  tick #1             -> ordinary user-role follow-up -> completed
  tick #2             -> ordinary user-role follow-up -> completed
  tick #3             -> ordinary user-role follow-up -> completed
                         stop; no fourth prompt is manufactured

This is not an autonomous-agent framework. It is one small primitive that makes “another step of model time” explicit, observable, and experimentally controllable.

Three-minute start

Requirements: Node.js 24 and DeepSeek Harness 0.1.0-rc.6.

Install the tagged source bundle into a DSH profile:

dsh plugin --profile web add "github:Lightmaze/dsh-tick-loop#v0.2.0-alpha.3"
dsh web

The bundle deliberately disables DSH Goal/Ralph continuation and automatic compaction in that profile so they cannot become hidden continuation sources. Use a disposable profile or review cordis.patch.yml before installing into a profile you already rely on.

In a new session, establish what tick means in the natural conversation:

A tick asks for nothing; it is simply a basic time step in which thought can continue. Therefore, do real thinking rather than merely performing the appearance of thought.

After that turn settles, run:

/tick 3

Useful controls:

/tick                                  Default count and literal-tick policy
/tick 12                               Exactly 12 additional time steps
/tick policies                         List configured policies
/tick 12 --policy reflective-en        Use a named, frozen time-step text
/tick 12 --policy reflective-en --resume
                                       Cross one latest interrupted boundary
/tick status                           Inspect the current bounded run
/tick stop                             Stop before the next enqueue

Run the provider-free protocol demonstration locally:

npm run demo

It exercises the command, terminal gate, three sequential enqueues, audit records, and hard stop. It does not fabricate model output or call a provider.

Two ways to use a time step

Literal tick

The built-in literal-tick policy sends exactly:

tick

This is the smallest intervention. Its meaning comes from the session's normal context, not from a hidden persona or goal prompt.

Named policy

For controlled prompt-comparison experiments, configure explicit time-step texts and select one per run. Ready-to-copy overlays are included in examples/reflective.en.yml and examples/reflective.zh-CN.yml.

The selected policy is frozen when the run starts. Audit records store its ID, UTF-8 byte length, and SHA-256 digest, but not another copy of the prompt text.

What the plugin guarantees

Property	Contract
Explicit start	Ordinary conversation never starts a loop. Only /tick does.
Natural context first	A settled, natural user turn must already exist.
One turn at a time	The next time step is queued only after the previous terminal is completed.
Hard bound	A run accepts 1–256 additional steps and never manufactures step N+1.
Control/context separation	/tick ... stays in the command plane; only the selected time-step text reaches the model.
Provenance	Plugin steps are counted by source metadata, not by matching the visible word tick.
Fail closed	Error, unknown terminal, inconsistent history, disposal, or state drift stops or waits; there is no silent fallback.
Auditability	JSONL records capture arming, scheduling, enqueue, terminal, stop, and completion decisions.

--resume is intentionally narrow: it may start a new bounded run across one latest durable interrupted terminal. It does not resurrect an exact in-memory timer, count an interrupted turn as completed, or replay a tool effect whose outcome is unknown.

The complete state machine and audit schema are in docs/PROTOCOL.md.

Tick is not a scheduler or a goal loop

• A scheduler asks when a prompt should run.
• A goal loop asks what outcome should keep being pursued.
• Tick asks neither. It grants an already-contextualized session one bounded next turn after settlement.

That distinction is the project. If another mechanism supplies purpose, background recurrence, retry, compaction, or hidden continuation, it should be named and measured separately.

Evidence boundary

This repository proves source-level and provider-free Harness behavior. The real DSH command-registry gate verifies that /tick is registered as a slash command and that only the generated time-step message reaches the follow-up seam.

It does not prove hidden continuous thinking, autonomous life, consciousness, useful self-direction, or that more ticks improve a task. A model-visible time step is still an input. Its effects are empirical and may depend on the model, context, tools, task, and policy.

Use the preregistration and comparison guidance in docs/EXPERIMENTS.md before making claims from a run.

Development

node --test
node scripts/protocol-demo.mjs --check
node scripts/release-gate.mjs
DSH_INSTALL_ROOT=/path/to/dsh npm run test:dsh-registry
npm pack --dry-run

The test suite uses Node.js built-ins and makes no provider calls. CI runs on Windows and Linux. DSH compatibility is exact-version pinned because upstream is still a release candidate.

Project map

• docs/PROTOCOL.md — command grammar, state machine, audit records, and recovery boundary.
• docs/EXPERIMENTS.md — controlled comparisons and honest interpretation.
• CONTRIBUTING.md — changes, tests, and observation reports.
• SECURITY.md — private disclosure and trace hygiene.
• CHANGELOG.md — release history.

Bug reports and reproducible observations are welcome. Please use the issue templates and remove provider credentials, private prompts, and workspace data before attaching traces.

License

MIT