DeepSeek Harness preset switching limitation: mid-session changes break model comparison experiments

Physical-Neat-5211 · reddit · 2026-08-14

The author discovered that in DeepSeek Harness, once a session has messages, the Web UI prevents switching presets. This is because a preset changes not only the model but also tools, approval rules, system prompt, and agent loop, so switching mid-session would leave old tool calls inconsistent with the new runtime, ruining comparison experiments. The author uses an OpenAI-compatible API and ZenMux gateway, starting a fresh session for each model while keeping presets unchanged, and verifies routing via Harness trace and gateway logs. Harness is still a developer preview, so behavior may change.

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