# DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Orca (slim)

> Orca scores 57.4 (C) to DeepSeek Harness's 48.5 (D) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepseek-harness-vs-orca.md (~5,300 tokens) · this version ~1,430 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepseek-harness-vs-orca.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepseek-harness-vs-orca
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
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Orca scores 57.4 (C) on agent readiness against DeepSeek Harness (dsh)'s 48.5 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. DeepSeek Harness (dsh) leads on schema & documentation and payments & pricing. Both do agent harnesses.

- DeepSeek Harness (dsh): D 48.5, rank #1111 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/deepseek-harness.min.md
- Orca: C 57.4, rank #791 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orca.min.md
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh), good for Developers who use DeepSeek models and want a scriptable harness with ACP, a JSON event stream and a Python SDK. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 77 against 65; Payments & pricing, 60 against 40. Also Free to start without a card.
- Orca, good for Developers who want an orchestrator agent to split work across parallel coding agents, on desktop or mobile. Ahead on Reliability, 58 against 38. Also No key needed to call it; No incidents deducted, where DeepSeek Harness (dsh) loses 8 points for them.

| Category | DeepSeek Harness (dsh) | Orca |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 38 | 58 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 77 | 65 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 68 | 70 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 40 | 43 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 71 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 53 | 54 |

| Fact (where they differ) | DeepSeek Harness (dsh) | Orca |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | DeepSeek | Lovecast Inc. |
| Auth | API key | None |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-17 | 2026-11-06 |
| Popularity | 245k npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Orca +20: DeepSeek Harness (dsh) 38 (Local-package reading, graded on npm `latest`, which the README's `npx @deepseek-ai/dsh` installs (0.2.0-rc.2 per the 18 October check; npm not re-read on 4 November). Official npm package with Node 22.19+ and 24+ stated, and a Python wheel for Python 3.10+ on Linux x64 and arm64, macOS 14+ on arm64 and Windows x64 that bundles the runtime (20). Public CI. ci.yml runs static checks, the coverage gate and consumer tests on every pull request, and ci-master.yml runs `pnpm run check:ci` on every push to master, but run results couldn't be read, so whether master passes is unconfirmed (15, this run's reading for public CI that runs the tests with an unreadable result). CONTRIBUTING.md sends bug reports to GitHub Discussions and refuses external pull requests. Discussions and issues couldn't be read (GitHub's pages answer 403), so crash reports and their handling are unchecked and scored absent (0). Alpha, next and latest dist-tags separate channels. Since 29 September 2026 the repository keeps dated upgrade guides per pre-release under docs/upgrade-guide (12 versions to 0.2.2-alpha.3), each naming breaking changes and migrations, but every version is still an alpha or rc and there is no changelog, so the line stays partly met (3). Developer preview, no 1.0 or stable release (0). 20 + 15 + 0 + 3 + 0 = 38.); Orca 58 (Local software. Desktop and mobile builds and a Homebrew cask (20). Unit, end-to-end and platform test workflows; pass state not read (15). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Tags to v1.4.251, no changelog file (8). Version 1.4 (15). 20 + 15 + 0 + 8 + 15 = 58.)
- Payments & pricing, DeepSeek Harness (dsh) +20: DeepSeek Harness (dsh) 60 (Self-hosted rule, as for the other open-source harnesses. No payment protocol (0). The harness is free under MIT with nothing to buy (20). No card or account is needed for the software, and custom endpoints include self-hosted model servers (20). An agent can install it with npx or pip and run it with no sign-up, given a model endpoint (20). DeepSeek's API is a separate purchase. 0 + 20 + 20 + 20 = 60.); Orca 40 (Scored on the cloud option. No protocol (0). The cloud price wasn't found on the pages read (0). The desktop app is free and MIT with no card (20). The local app needs no sign-up that we found (20). 0 + 0 + 20 + 20 = 40.)
- Schema & documentation, DeepSeek Harness (dsh) +12: DeepSeek Harness (dsh) 77 (Framework reading. `--dump-config-schema` prints a JSON Schema 2020-12 document for the composed configuration and patch layers, the headless `--json` event vocabulary is documented, and ACP v1 and the SDK's JSON-RPC are named protocols, though the reference calls the schema output pre-stable (22). llms.txt on the docs site, with a raw Markdown address for every page (10). Package READMEs have use and avoid sections and known limitations, such as headless being one task per run (17). Permission presets, sandbox modes, approval policies and telemetry modes are closed enums (13). Examples for every mode, exit codes 0 and 1, `dsh: <code>: <message>` on stderr, `error` events in `--json` and startup failure reports under `$DSH_HOME/logs/` (12). Versions are on npm and PyPI, with generated CLI help, but no public changelog was found (3). Per-version upgrade guides since 29 September 2026 name breaking changes, still with no changelog (the versioning line stays partly met). 22 + 10 + 17 + 13 + 12 + 3 = 77.); Orca 65 (Harness reading. A docs site with CLI orchestration and native chat pages (65).)