dsh-flash-ctx-mon

The context monitor companion plugin for dock-flash — it registers its own alert provider and its own panel switch instead of living inside dock-flash's apply().

Apache-2.0

中文

What it does

Two capabilities, one in each half of the plugin:

1. Context monitor — reads the precise token usage DSH already reports on its session event stream and turns pressure on the model's context window into dock-flash alerts, at three rising thresholds.
2. Session skills chip — a chip in the conversation header listing the skills the current session has actually loaded, resolved against the skill catalog.

The monitor is on by default — only an explicit "off" turns it off — and it is entirely client-side.

What it registers

Host half — src/index.ts → dist/index.js

A Cordis plugin named dsh-flash-ctx-mon.

Thing	Detail
Settings namespace	dsh-flash-ctx-mon
Fields	ctxApproxWindow, ctxThresholdInfo, ctxThresholdWarning, ctxThresholdError, ctxPollBase, ctxPollMin, modelContextWindows, modelContextWindowSources
Routes	none
Host-side services	none (inject: [])

The host half exists only to hold the settings namespace and its schema. There is no collector and no route, because there is nothing to collect on the host: token usage arrives through DSH session events (ctx.get('sessions')), the model catalog through remote.session.modelCatalog(), and the skill catalog through remote.skills.list() — all of it in the browser.

Browser half — lib/client.js (no build step)

Registration	Through
Alert provider dsh-flash-ctx-mon:context-alert	ctx.get('dockFlashAlerts').registerProvider()
Panel switch dsh-flash-ctx-mon:monitor-context	ctx.get('quickControl').registerSwitch()
Session header chip dsh-flash-ctx-mon-skills	ctx.inject(['slots']) → conversation.session.header.actions

Switch properties: type: 'toggle', group: 'system', cluster: 'system-alerts', order: 59, icon: 'message', plus a Configure button. Its visibility follows dock-flash's dock-flash:system-alerts master toggle — with the alert registry switched off there is nothing for this switch to drive. It deliberately carries no subtitle: the live "model · 12%" readout it used to print on the row is already the first thing in the panel the Configure button opens.

Dual discovery, plus a fallback poll. ctx.get('quickControl') / ctx.get('dockFlashAlerts') resolve asynchronously, so registration has three routes: the dock-flash:ready event (dock-flash loaded after us), a synchronous ctx.get() check (it loaded before us), and a fallback poll of up to 15 attempts 200 ms apart. The first to succeed sets _registered, so nothing registers twice.

The switch

In dock-flash's quick panel, under ⚙️ System → System Alerts, find Context Monitor:

• turning it off writes '0' to localStorage['dsh-flash-ctx-mon:monitor-context'] and calls setProviderEnabled(…, false) on the alert registry, so the provider stops producing alerts;
• turning it on restores both.

Who wins. The browser key is the authority, and absence means on (getItem(key) !== '0'). The host's own fields are all volatile(), so DSH resets them to their defaults on every restart — the browser is what remembers your choice.

The config modal

Configure beside the switch opens the context monitor panel:

Control	Range	Step	Default
Context Window Size ctxApproxWindow	64000–512000 tokens	8000	128000
Info Threshold ctxThresholdInfo	30–80 %	1	70
Warning Threshold ctxThresholdWarning	50–92 %	1	85
Error Threshold ctxThresholdError	70–98 %	1	95
Context Poll Base Interval ctxPollBase	5000–60000 ms	1000	20000
Context Poll Min Interval ctxPollMin	1000–10000 ms	500	2000

Below the sliders the panel reports the live state — Current Model, Window Size, Window Source (Session Event / Model Catalog / Error Parsed / Manual / Built-in / Fuzzy Match / Fallback), Data Source (Precise / Awaiting data), Input Tokens and Context Pressure — and carries the Model Window Map editor, a Refresh Catalog action, and a preview of what the alert messages look like.

Alerts

Emitted only when the token source is precise; with no session-event usage data the monitor reports "Awaiting data" and emits nothing — it does not guess from message counts.

Level	At	Title
ℹ️ info	≥ ctxThresholdInfo (70 %)	Session context getting long
🟡 warning	≥ ctxThresholdWarning (85 %)	Session context nearly exhausted
🔴 error	≥ ctxThresholdError (95 %)	Session context almost exhausted

Each message carries the percentage and the reading it came from — model · 12.4K/128K in precise mode. Alerts are dismissible and flow through dock-flash's registry, so they appear in the panel's alert list and as toasts like any other.

How a model's window is resolved

_resolveWindow(model) reads modelContextWindows — the user-mapped table in the settings namespace — and labels each answer with its provenance from modelContextWindowSources. A model that is not in the map resolves to null, and the caller falls back to ctxApproxWindow (the "Fallback" source).

The built-in window table has been retired. _KNOWN_WINDOWS is empty and the catalog auto-fill is a documented no-op, so today the map is the only source of a real window size — which is why the panel's Model Window Map editor is how you teach it about a model it gets wrong.

Both map fields are volatile(), and that is not a statement that they are transient. The settings service rejects any patched path that is not under a volatile node (Config field "…" is not volatile), so a non-volatile modelContextWindows meant every mapping the panel wrote was rejected, rolled back and lost — a mapped model kept falling back to ctxApproxWindow. Volatile is what makes the write legal; the value still lands in the profile patch and survives a restart.

Polling

The monitor samples on an adaptive interval: ctxPollBase is the ceiling used while usage is low, and the interval tightens as usage rises, never below ctxPollMin. In precise mode the base interval is doubled automatically, because the event source pushes updates rather than being polled. A skill being used forces an immediate poll, so its notice is claimed while the use is still fresh.

The skills chip

A chip in the conversation header, registered into conversation.session.header.actions as dsh-flash-ctx-mon-skills (order 15). It lists the skills the current session has loaded — subagents and other sessions are excluded, because the slot hands the component the id of the session it renders for.

Detection uses DSH's own marker: the <skill_content name="X"> block emitted when a skill body is loaded. It arrives on two paths — the model calling the skill tool, and a user typing /name in the composer (which produces no tool call of its own) — and a failed call carries no block, so failures are not counted. Names are resolved against the skill catalog (remote.skills.list()), and the popup shows uses, first/last use and the catalog description, with Open in sidebar.

The tracker is deliberately independent of the monitor switch: the chip keeps working with the context monitor switched off.

Settings

Field	Default	Notes
ctxApproxWindow	128000	Fallback window for a model the map does not know
ctxThresholdInfo	70	% of the window
ctxThresholdWarning	85	% — must exceed the info threshold
ctxThresholdError	95	% — must exceed the warning threshold
ctxPollBase	20000	ms, the low-usage ceiling
ctxPollMin	2000	ms, the floor
modelContextWindows	{}	model id → window size
modelContextWindowSources	{}	model id → provenance tag

Dependencies

Package	Type	Purpose
@deepseek-ai/cordis	peer	the plugin framework
dock-flash >=1.5.0-0 <2.0.0-0 || >=2.0.0-0 <3.0.0-0	peer	supplies the quickControl and dockFlashAlerts services and the dock-flash:ready event
dock-base >=0.1.2-0 <1.0.0-0 || >=0.2.0-0 <1.0.0-0	peer, optional	workbench mode only
@deepseek-ai/schemastery	dependency	the settings schema (volatile())

There is no hard dependency on dock-flash: every service is resolved through ctx.get(...), and compatibility is declared by the peer range — the same shape dock-flash itself uses towards dock-base. The range carries one branch per tuple whose prereleases must resolve, so both the 1.x and 2.x lines are accepted, prereleases included.

Install

dsh plugin --profile <profile> add dsh-flash-ctx-mon

Requires dock-flash ≥ 1.5 — it supplies the quickControl and dockFlashAlerts services and the dock-flash:ready event, and any 2.x satisfies it. Restart DSH after installing.

cordis.patch.yml inserts the host row. Its name is a package name, resolved through the profile's node_modules — never a relative path.

The browser half needs no row: the module loader discovers it from package.json's exports["./client"] plus dsh.client and serves it at /plugins/dsh-flash-ctx-mon/client.js.

Build

pnpm install
pnpm run build       # tsc → dist/index.js   (host half only)
pnpm run typecheck
node scripts/verify-config-volatile.mjs ./dist/index.js

dist/index.js is tracked on purpose, for the same reason dock-flash tracks its own: a git install fetches sources and runs no build script, so a repository without dist/ would arrive missing the host entry point that main and exports["."] point at. lib/client.js is a single file edited directly; it has no build step and takes effect on page refresh.

scripts/verify-config-volatile.mjs loads the built host half and re-runs the settings service's own volatile-path test against it — the invariant the two map fields must satisfy, or every write to them is rejected.

Layout

src/index.ts      HOST half      → tsc → dist/index.js
lib/client.js     BROWSER half   → no build, edited directly
dist/index.js     compiled host half — tracked on purpose
cordis.patch.yml  bundle layer: inserts the host row into the profile
scripts/          verify-config-volatile.mjs — the volatile-schema check
.github/workflows/sync-from-gitee.yml — the Gitee → GitHub mirror

Gitee is the authoritative repository; GitHub (github.com/tcgbp/dsh-flash-ctx-mon) is a mirror of it and the host of the release tarball.

Privacy and limits (deliberate)

• Nothing leaves the machine. The monitor reads DSH's own session events and two client remotes; it has no host route, no collector and no outbound request.
• Precise or nothing. With no session-event usage data the monitor shows "Awaiting data" and raises no alert, rather than estimating from message counts.
• Per-session skills only. The chip counts the current session; subagent sessions and other conversations are excluded. A session that is no longer retained reports "Skill catalog unavailable" with a Retry.
• Bounded tracking. Tracked skills are capped at 200 per session (defensive), and a skill notice is only announced for a use within the last 15 seconds, so replaying a session's history does not fire a burst of notices.
• UI language: the panel and the alert text carry both Chinese and English, and follow DSH's language setting.