# @deepseek-ai/dsh-host-apiproxy

English | [中文](README.zh.md)

The API gateway every client shape shares: the TS contract (`src/api/`, zero Node dependencies, importable from the browser), the fetch carrier pair (`src/fetch/`: `toFetchHandler` on the host side, `AbstractApiClient` plus platform subclasses on the client side), and the host-side implementation (`src/api-proxy.ts`: `createApiProxy` plus the default-exported `ApiProxyService` gateway plugin — config `{provider, model, workspaceRoot?}`, provides `ctx.apiProxy`). Transport-agnostic by design: this package registers no routes; carriers (HTTP today, IPC later) wrap `ctx.apiProxy` themselves. The shipped core composition lives in [`apps/cli/config/base.cordis.yml`](../../../apps/cli/config/base.cordis.yml).

## Contract layer (`/api`)

Wire messages form a four-quadrant discriminated union — who initiates × request/response — decoupled from the physical channel: `ClientRequest` (POST `/api/<method>` body), `ServerResponse` (that POST's response body), `ServerRequest` (SSE frame), `ClientResponse` (POST `/api/respond` body). Responses always echo the matching request's `rpcId` and never mint a new one. Method parameter/return structures live only in the domain interface signatures (`SessionsApi`, `HostApi`, `EventsApi`); `RpcMethodMap` registers the methods and every other position derives via `RequestPayload<K>`/`ResponseValue<K>`. Zod schemas anchor `satisfies z.ZodType<Wire<T>>` and parse at two levels: envelope first, business payload second, dispatched per method. Business errors ride `RpcResult`'s error branch (`RpcErrorDetailsMap` closes the code set); HTTP status expresses only the carrier. Every `/api` POST must declare the `application/json` media type — anything else is refused with 415 before dispatch, so cross-site "simple" requests (which browsers send without a CORS preflight) can never execute a side-effectful method blind.

The layering/protocol decisions are recorded in the [GUI layering and RPC protocol RFC](../../../.agents/notes/implemented/architecture/2026-07-19-gui-layering-and-rpc-protocol.md); the browser-side consumption architecture in the [web client architecture RFC](../../../.agents/notes/implemented/architecture/2026-07-19-gui-web-client-architecture.md).

`session.history` pages on append-origin message boundaries: `maxMessages` counts `user/message`, `assistant/message`, and `steering/message` events that entered the surface by appending, so a model-only replacement copy consumes no quota. Each page stays one contiguous raw event range, which keeps a compaction's log-only provenance on the same page as the replacement that cites it.

`session.history`'s tail page (`beforeSeq` absent) additionally carries an optional `projections` block — the watermark snapshot of every unit registered on `ctx.sessionProjections` (`@deepseek-ai/dsh-session-projection`), with `asOfSeq` = the last event seq the values reflect (`-1` on an empty log). The gateway also subscribes to the registry's change feed and mints a `session/projection` mux frame per changed unit (`{sessionId, key, value, seq}` — live push state, never logged; clients hold one generic per-session value store under higher-seq-wins). The carrier holds zero domain knowledge (each value passed its unit's own schema inside the registry; the wire schemas keep `values`/`value` wide); loadOlder pages never carry the block, and a composition without the registry serves histories without either surface.

Session titles ride the generic projection pair like every other domain — the history-tail `projections` block plus `session/projection` frames under the `title` key (the bespoke `session/title` frame is retired). Titles do not join `session.list`; cold sessions remain metadata-only there until opening or resuming attaches their logs. `session.rename` accepts an explicit user title (resuming a cold session first), delegating to `ctx.sessionTitle.rename` — the accepted `session/title` event pins the title against automatic regeneration — and returns the normalized title plus its event seq so a client settles its `title` projection cell ahead of the push frame; a title that normalizes to empty returns `title-invalid`.

`session.fork` maps an optional event anchor to the first `turn/end` at or after it, letting a message action include that message's whole turn. An omitted or past-end anchor selects the last completed turn; an in-log anchor whose turn remains open returns `fork-unavailable` rather than clipping backward. The published child inherits the source's seeded history, cwd, latest logged provider/model/reasoning target, and lineage before joining the source Workspace. If Workspace attachment fails, `workspace-attach-failed` carries the already-published child id so clients can reconcile it. The [SessionStore fork decision](../../../.agents/notes/implemented/feature/2026-06-30-session-store-fork-api.md) owns the boundary rationale.

Session model routing is a session-domain contract. `session.models` returns the selected provider/model/reasoning target with provider-grouped advisory models, exact-route reasoning metadata, and provider-local lookup failures. `session.selectModel` validates the optional adapter-owned reasoning effort and replaces the complete target selected for the next prompt-assembly boundary. Catalog membership is not validation: an adapter may resolve an unlisted model, while an unavailable route or unsupported effort returns `model-unavailable`.

Pending queued input is a live control-plane contract, not session history. The gateway mirrors queued `InboxItem` occurrences from `agent/inbox/*` and broadcasts authoritative `session/queue` snapshots on every queued change and reconnect; pending steering stays outside this Web projection. `session.updateQueue` addresses one `InboxItemId`: edit replaces pending content and remove discards it. A driver claim wins races by retiring the address before admission; a later operation returns `queue-item-not-found`. The operation queries only an attached Agent and never resumes a cold session because process-local inbox identities do not survive restart or disposal. The client never infers retirement from turn or status events.

Workspace and Session lists are separate reconnect baselines. `workspace.create({ name })` creates a uniquely titled directory under the configured root, while `workspace.create({ path })` adopts an existing canonical directory and permits basename-derived titles to repeat. `workspace.delete` removes only the Workspace registration, `session.create` accepts an optional preallocated Session id, and `host/workspace-changed`, `host/workspace-removed`, plus `host/session-added` carry committed increments in either arrival order. `workspace.archiveSession` adds one session to the registry-global archive set and answers the full updated set; `workspace.list` carries that set as the reconnect baseline and `host/archived-sessions-changed` pushes the full snapshot after every durable change. Archiving hides the session from grouping surfaces without touching its log or its workspace account; a session neither live nor persisted fails with `session-not-found`. Registration deletion preserves the directory and session logs; its Sessions remain in `session.list` and become Ungrouped. `SessionSummary.blank` and the `host/session-added` frame carry the derived zero-events bit: clients hide blank sessions and reuse them per workspace, flip blank on the first `host/session-status(running:true)`, and treat `session.list` as the reconnect authority; cold summaries are never blank because lazy persistence keeps never-appended sessions out of `list()`.

`session.search` is a bounded content-search projection over the sessions visible through `session.list`. The gateway asks the optional `ctx.sessionQuery` service for globally ranked current-surface user, assistant, and steering matches, consumes that stream until it has at most 20 visible session/snippet pairs plus one lookahead, and revalidates every hit against the list-derived authorization set before returning it. Provider pages start at 20 hits; when a first-page request rejects that limit, the gateway probes 10, 5, 2, then 1 and retains the learned size for continuation and stale-generation restarts. Returned snippets contain at most 240 Unicode code points, and the response schema independently enforces that bound at each client boundary. Keeping the authorization set in Host memory avoids SQLite's variable ceiling for large valid corpora without weakening visibility or ranking.

A stale continuation discards every partial result, deduplication entry, and cursor from that provider attempt, then restarts at the first page against the original list-derived visibility snapshot without discarding the learned provider page size. Limit probes and stale retries share the same limit of at most 100 provider calls (and therefore at most 2,000 inspected hits); a page larger than its requested limit, a repeated continuation cursor, or a still-unexhausted stream at that call budget fails closed as an `internal` business error. The carrier request signal cancels persistence listing, cold-summary collection, and every search call, including a limit or stale rejection observed concurrently with cancellation. A deployment without the service, or any unrecovered index/query failure, also returns an `internal` business error so clients can retain metadata-only matches.

Directory picking delegates to the composed `ctx.directoryPicker` backend ([the directory-picker seam](../directory-picker/README.md)); a method called outside the composed capability's kind fails with `directory-picker-unavailable` (the client needs no advertisement — the composed picker package's own client half renders the matching interaction). Under `native`, `host.pickDirectory` opens one native chooser and returns its selected path (`null` on cancel); this user-paced method does not use the default 30-second unary timeout, while caller/connection aborts still propagate to the native process. Under `browse`, `host.listDirectory` returns one name-sorted directory level with breadcrumb ancestry, a `home` anchor, and host-owned `hidden` flags (absent path = home directory), and `host.createDirectory` creates one validated child segment; the backend's typed failures map 1:1 onto the `directory-unreadable`/`directory-exists`/`directory-create-failed` codes. The browser carrier's prefix-wide trust fence (dsh-client-connection) covers all of these like every other `/api` request.

`host.openPath` opens a filesystem path with the operating system's default application (`open` on macOS, `Invoke-Item` on Windows, `xdg-open` on Linux). The opener is injectable for tests. The browser carrier applies the same loopback, same-origin restriction as `host.pickDirectory`.

The `command.*` and `skill.*` domains expose the host command registry and skill catalog to clients. Every method addresses one session's agent by `sessionId` (a served session always has an Agent; `command.*` resumes cold sessions through the same path as `session.*`, while `skill.list` resolves the project root from the session header without touching the Agent registry). `skill.list` serves the browser's user-selected model-reference path, so it returns only skills that are both model-invocable and user-invocable; this domain has no direct skill-loading RPC. `command.execute` runs a slash-command line host-side with pure admission semantics: the response reports whether the line resolved to a handler plus the minted lifecycle `commandId` when it did (correlating the acknowledgment with the flow node), while the outcome rides the durably logged `command/run`/`command/done` lifecycle pair broadcast on the mux stream. Command handlers may legitimately outlast the 30-second transport health deadline, so `command.execute` carries only caller/connection cancellation; that signal cancels the running handler. `host/commands-changed` is the catalog invalidation frame: clients refetch `command.list` instead of diffing.

The `settings.*`, `credentials.*`, and `llm.*` domains are the configuration-page wire. The settings domain serves the namespaces addressed by registered configurable providers (`ctx.llm.listConfigurableProviders()`) plus a small explicit allowlist — the Web preference `permission` and the product-owned `ui-onboarding`; adding a Settings registration alone never makes it remotely readable or writable. Any other namespace answers `settings-not-exposed` — the same answer an unregistered namespace gets, so no caller can enumerate the registry by probing. `settings.describe` returns each exposed namespace's serialized schemastery schema, redacted layered values (resolved/`base`/`user` — a field's presence in `user` marks it user-overridden), the `secrets` slot list, and the section's `revision`. `settings.update`/`settings.replace` write the user layer; `settings.mutate` applies path ops (`set`/`unset`) against the section as stored, which is the removal path for a client holding the redacted view — rebuilding a section from it and replacing wholesale would delete the secrets the wire never returned. Any write may carry `expectedRevision`; a stale one answers `settings-conflict` with both revisions rather than overwriting the writer that landed first, and every other seam refusal folds into `settings-rejected`. Secret-role values never ride any response in any layer; a secret crosses the wire in exactly one direction — inside an `update`/`mutate` payload or `credentials.set`. `credentials.describe` returns value-free views (`configured`/`source`/`writable`), and `credentials.set`/`credentials.unset` map a shadowed-reference refusal onto `credential-rejected`. `llm.providers` merges the configurable-provider directory with live routes (dormant entries carry `active: false`; undeclared live routes append with no settings address) and `llm.models` is the session-independent catalog. Three invalidation frames keep every surface converged without polling: `host/settings-changed {ns}` (`settings/document-updated` passthrough, so a raw change whose resolved value is unchanged still reaches clients), `host/credentials-changed {ref}` (reference names only, never values), and `host/models-changed` — fired by `llm/adapters-updated` and by a change to a configurable-provider namespace, whose settings carry that provider's catalog and endpoint; a `permission` or `ui-onboarding` change emits only its settings invalidation. The browser carrier restricts the whole configuration plane, reads included (`settings.describe`/`update`/`replace`/`mutate`, `credentials.describe`/`set`/`unset`), to loopback same-origin requests — the `host.pickDirectory` privileged set. A composition without a settings or credential provider answers those domains with an actionable `internal` error naming the missing plugin.

## Carrier layer (`/client` + root)

`AbstractApiClient` holds every protocol invariant — rpcId minting, envelope wrap/unwrap, zod parsing, SSE frame decoding, unary timeout, microtask-batched envelope observation (`subscribeEnvelopes`) — while platform subclasses supply only the `doFetch` transport aspect. `InProcessApiClient` over `toFetchHandler(api)` is the isomorphic point: the full wire serialization/validation path with no network, used by `dsh -p` headless.

## Model Experience

None, as the package defines the client↔host wire contract and carriers; nothing here reaches a model request.

#### KV Cache effect

None; this package neither assembles nor sends a provider request.

## Known Limitations and Deferred Work

- **`respond` routing is shipped, but pending-interaction state is host-side work** — the wire shape (POST `/api/respond`, `RpcReceipt`) is final; the pending table that makes late/duplicate answers meaningful lives in `src/api-proxy.ts` and is still minimal (questions only, no approvals).
- **Reserved seams stay out of `RpcMethodMap`** — `prompt.mode: 'inject'`, `task.list`, and a describe `hostInstanceId` are documented reservations (the former `host.listModels` reservation shipped as `llm.models`); an unknown method fails loud at envelope parse rather than getting a not-implemented code.
- **No protocol version field** — client and host ship together; `host.describe` gains a version negotiation field only when an independently released client exists.
- **Search failures include provider diagnostics** — the gateway is a single-user local service. A carrier that exposes it to multiple users must replace internal search details with a public-safe diagnostic.
- **Linux native picker requires desktop tooling** — under the `native` capability, `host.pickDirectory` reports an actionable error when neither Zenity nor KDialog is installed; the browse backend is the composition-level fallback (see the [native backend README](../directory-picker-native/README.md)).
- **A cold session's `updatedAt` counts a mere pickup as a write (per-file backends only)** — the attached projection excludes the `session/end-seed` boundary, because picking a session up is not activity, but a cold session's `updatedAt` is its log file's mtime and every durable write refreshes that, the boundary included. `agentFor()` resumes a cold session on first touch, so merely opening one in a client writes it. This applies only where `locate()` resolves a per-session artifact, i.e. JSONL; SQLite returns `undefined`, so its cold sessions fall back to `createdAt` and are skewed the other way — too old rather than too new — independently of this boundary. A session touched without being worked in therefore sorts newer than its last real activity until it attaches. Separating the two needs a log read, which is exactly what the mtime path exists to avoid; a stored last-activity field in the index would fix it at the source, scoped in the [last-activity-index Agent Note](../../../.agents/notes/proposed/architecture/2026-07-29-durable-last-activity-index.md).
