idle-scholar

Idle-time micro-learning for DeepSeek Harness: turns the agent's waiting gaps (tool calls, MCP connects, large file reads, subagent dispatches) into flash cards — one card per waiting turn, never in the way.

Ships seed decks for English, Japanese, and the eight subjects of the Chinese National Judicial Examination (法考: 刑法 · 民法 · 刑诉 · 民诉 · 行政法 · 商经知 · 三国法 · 理论法). New subjects are plain JSON course packs — a community deck is a PR that adds files.

How it works

The plugin teaches the model two things and gives it the cards:

1. A system-prompt section — when a turn will keep the user waiting, show one study card at the very start of that turn, then continue the main task.
2. An embedded skill (idle-scholar) — the full workflow: card formats, course rotation, the "别学了" opt-out.

Three tools supply the content and track progress:

Tool	What it does
study_card	Draw a card (optional course / deck / type filters). Seen-weighting: never-seen cards first, immediate repeats excluded.
study_status	Today's count vs the daily goal, streak, deck coverage, course catalog.
study_switch	Change the default course; persisted across sessions.

Progress (per-card seen counts, daily totals, streak) is stored in $DSH_HOME/idle-scholar.json — out of the repository.

Installation (DSH plugin)

dsh plugin --profile web add /path/to/idle_scholar

Then reload the harness. On DeepSeek Harness ≥ 0.2.1-alpha.3 with hot reload enabled, code updates to this plugin apply without a restart; a fresh install still needs one. If your profile's cordis.patch.yml already has an idle-scholar row, delete it first — duplicate registrations fail to boot.

Recreating a profile with dsh … --from-default-profile replaces that profile, including its plugins — re-add the plugin afterwards.

Installation (standalone skill, any agent tool)

The skill is a portable Agent Skills file:

cp -r skills/idle-scholar ~/.claude/skills/   # or ~/.agents/skills, ~/.codex/skills, ...

Without the plugin tools, the skill still works: the model generates cards in real time following skills/idle-scholar/references/course-topics.md.

Configuration

Field	Default	Meaning
enabled	true	Master switch. Gates the prompt section (the only nagging surface); tools and skill stay mounted.
defaultCourse	'en'	Course study_card draws from when no filter is passed.
dailyGoal	10	Cards per day, used for progress reporting.
promptSection	true	Expose the system-prompt section.
skill	true	Register the embedded idle-scholar skill.
coursesDir	—	Extra directory of course packs, loaded in addition to the bundled decks.
stateFile	$DSH_HOME/idle-scholar.json	Progress file location.

Course pack format

A deck is one JSON file at courses/<course>/<deck>.json:

{
  "id": "en-vocab",
  "course": "en",
  "name": "English core vocabulary",
  "cards": [
    {
      "id": "en-vocab-001",
      "type": "vocab",
      "prompt": "**serendipity** means?",
      "hint": "noun, related to chance",
      "answer": "The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident",
      "explanation": "From The Three Princes of Serendip.",
      "tags": ["CET6"]
    },
    {
      "id": "en-quiz-001",
      "type": "quiz",
      "prompt": "Neither of the reports ___ been proofread.",
      "choices": ["have", "has", "are", "were"],
      "answer": 1,
      "explanation": "neither of + plural noun takes a singular verb in formal grammar."
    }
  ]
}

Card types: vocab (word card), quiz (multiple choice, answer is an index into choices), concept (knowledge point), tip (culture / practical advice). All cards need a non-empty explanation.

Contributing a new subject

1. Create courses/<course-id>/<deck-id>.json following the format above (deck and card ids must be globally unique — test/decks.test.js enforces it).
2. Add the course and its decks to skills/idle-scholar/references/course-topics.md so skill-only deployments can generate on-topic cards.
3. Update the course table in skill.js (npm run skill regenerates SKILL.md; npm run skill:check verifies it).
4. npm test — the deck validator will catch malformed cards.

Development

npm test            # unit + fake-ctx + real cordis integration tests
npm run skill:check # SKILL.md is in sync with skill.js

Prerequisites: the integration tests import the DeepSeek Harness packages (@deepseek-ai/cordis, dsh-tools, dsh-skill, dsh-system-prompt) at runtime. They are peerDependencies — link them from your harness checkout or profile, and the tests skip with a clear reason if they cannot resolve.

The versions this plugin develops against are pinned in devDependencies. They are published to npm but not under the latest tag — npm's latest for @deepseek-ai/dsh-tools is still the placeholder 0.0.1-rc.1, while this plugin targets 0.2.1-alpha.4 (reached through the alpha dist-tag). Its companion versions are @deepseek-ai/cordis 4.0.5-alpha.2 and @deepseek-ai/schemastery 3.18.5-alpha.2; pin all three together. Note that alpha.4 has no dedicated dsh-0-2-1-* dist-tag, so the exact version strings in devDependencies are the only source of truth.

Roadmap

• Web panel (settings section + sidebar streak widget)
• Spaced repetition (SM-2 style scheduling instead of seen-weighting)
• More seed decks: 法考真题-style case cards, TOEFL/IELTS, classical Chinese

License

MIT