DeepSeek Open-Sources Harness Framework Cordis with 'Everything is a Plugin' Design
teortaxesTex · x · 2026-08-14
Alongside open-sourcing Harness, DeepSeek has published the design paper for its underlying framework, Cordis. The framework's most radical design is "Everything is a plugin": model adapters, tool registration, session logs, and even the Agent Loop driving tool calls are all replaceable components, leaving no fixed core.
Cordis splits this dynamic management into two dimensions:
- Temporal composability: Tracks side effects to reclaim resources when a plugin is uninstalled.
- Spatial composability: Manages dependencies and automatically adjusts lifecycles when dependencies change.
This design directly connects to recursive self-improvement. Instead of modifying model weights directly, AI can improve by modifying prompts, tools, workflows, and the Agent Loop. Currently, Harness's creation mode allows the Agent to inspect the environment and temporarily define, load, and unload components at runtime, meaning the Agent can modify its own harness rather than just calling tools.
Related event: DeepSeek Open-Sources Agent Framework Harness(28 posts)→
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