deepseek-harness/.agents/notes/archived/process/2026-07-22-cordis-tutorial-docs.md

Agent Note: Tutorial-style Cordis docs under docs/cordis-tutorial

Status: implemented Archived: 2026-07-27

English | 中文

Problem

The repo documents Cordis at two levels: the condensed cordis-primer states the concepts, and the docs/user/develop/ pages teach harness plugin authoring against harness services. Neither serves a developer meeting Cordis itself for the first time: the primer assumes the reader already writes plugins, and the develop pages jump straight to defineTool without showing how contexts, fibers, services, and dispatch actually behave. There was no path where a reader runs bare Cordis, watches a fiber go PENDING, or sees a waterfall veto happen.

Decision

docs/cordis-tutorial/ holds a seven-chapter hands-on tutorial (first plugin → lifecycle/effects → services → events → config → composition/HMR → harness tool). Its properties, in decreasing order of load-bearing-ness:

• Every transcript is real. Each chapter's files run in the gitignored tmp/cordis-tutorial/ scratch directory via node --import tsx ../../vendor/cordis/bin.js, and the shown output is what those commands print. The chapter that uses harness packages (@deepseek-ai/dsh-tools and @deepseek-ai/dsh-llm) runs keylessly.
• dsh-flavored, not pure Cordis: later chapters use real harness services and events (ctx.tools, tools/result) so the tutorial lands the reader inside this repo's actual composition model, per the requesting user's choice.
• English-only, published to both website locales through mirroredPages() in website/docs.ts under a Cordis 教程 / Cordis tutorial section of the develop sidebar — the same pattern as the reference pages, so a Chinese pair can ratchet in later without route changes.
• Code fences compile under doc-typecheck except the two fences that import scratch-relative files (./stats.ts) or intentionally throw, which carry ignore-check.

Alternatives considered

Under docs/user/develop/ as paired product docs. That tier requires en+zh+i18n records in the same PR, roughly doubling the change and coupling every future tutorial edit to a translation. Rejected for the first landing; the mirrored projection keeps the same public visibility.

Pure-Cordis tutorial with no harness packages. Cleaner as framework documentation, but the audience is agent developers extending this harness; ending at ctx.tools.execute and tools/result teaches the composition they will actually work in. The user chose this explicitly.

Extending the primer instead of a new directory. The primer is a 600-word budgeted concept reference; a multi-chapter walkthrough inside it would break its tier's job (and its budget) rather than complement it.

Consequences

• A runnable introduction to Cordis exercises the loader, fiber states, effects, service injection, all five dispatch-mode contracts, Schemastery validation, and HMR. It demonstrates PENDING dependencies and validation failure; it explains the loader's logged unresolved-entry failure because that boot-time log may not reach a console exporter.
• The tutorial's transcripts pin behavior informally but are not snapshot-gated; if loader or HMR behavior changes, the transcripts drift until a human replays the chapters. The compile gate covers only the code fences.
• The chapters name concrete harness APIs (ctx.tools.execute, CallId, tools/result); renames must update the tutorial like any other doc reference (verify-md-links catches file moves, not API prose).