# @deepseek-ai/dsh-pty-local

Local `node-pty` backend for `ctx.pty`. It starts an interactive shell under the shared `ctx.sandboxPolicy`, strips credential-shaped ambient environment variables, retains bounded line-oriented output, detects readiness, and tears down the captured process tree rooted at the `node-pty` child.

## Plugin (`pty-local`)

The plugin injects `pty`, `sandbox`, and `sandboxPolicy`, then registers the configured backend type (`shell`). `danger-full-access` starts the shell directly; confined modes wrap the exact shell argv through `ctx.sandbox`. The effective session mode is resolved at spawn. A change to a different effective mode is rejected before its `sandbox/mode` event commits while that owner has an open PTY or a spawn in progress; the fence is attached to the exact owner and therefore outlives a local-provider reload that retains existing sessions. Wait for creation to settle and close the sessions before changing modes, so a terminal opened with wider access cannot survive a downgrade.

Linux readiness combines a foreground-verified private bash prompt marker, foreground-process-group syscall inspection, silence fallback, and absolute timeout. macOS uses the verified prompt marker plus silence/timeout because it has no `/proc` syscall surface. A marker is not ready until printable prompt text arrives, including when the OSC marker and `PS1` are split across data callbacks. Unrecognized or unreadable process state is never a positive exact-idle signal. During unpublished startup, a fallback requires observed output; zero-output silence cannot publish an empty session, and timeout rejects the spawn. Cancellation closes the unpublished shell and rejects with the caller's exact abort reason even when its foreground process group is not observable yet; if that close fails, `PtyBackendCleanupError` separately preserves the cleanup failure for registry disposal. Incomplete terminal-control sequences are bounded by `maxReadBytes` and discarded through their terminator after crossing that limit; a trailing carriage return is carried across callbacks so split CRLF becomes one newline.

Send cancellation resolves the current foreground process group and delivers a real `SIGINT`; it never emulates interruption by writing `\x03`, so raw-mode programs remain cancellable. Close sends `SIGTERM` to descendants, waits, then sends `SIGKILL` to the union of captured survivors and newly scanned descendants so reparenting cannot hide a process from teardown. It verifies that every retained identity is gone or, on Linux, a non-executing zombie before stopping the shell; zombie entries are quiescent and are reaped as the shell exits. A survivor failure does not cache a permanently rejected close; a later close retries the teardown.

## Model Experience

### Indirect consumer

#### What the model sees

Nothing directly. Through `@deepseek-ai/dsh-tool-pty`, the model may receive bounded MOTD, send deltas, scrollback pages, readiness reasons, and cleanup errors.

#### Token effect

None until a consumer returns bounded backend output. Retained PTY scrollback is not placed in model history by this package.

#### KV Cache effect

No direct invalidation; the consumer owns prompts, schemas, and appended results.

## Known Limitations and Deferred Work

- Line-oriented output is normalized; full-screen alternate-buffer interaction is unsupported.
- Linux exact probes support x64 and arm64 UAPI tables; other architectures use prompt-marker and silence/timeout readiness.
- A descendant that daemonizes and reparents before teardown leaves the captured tree; cleanup never broadens to the launcher PID's POSIX session because that can include unrelated processes.
- Sessions do not survive harness process exit.
