Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run
DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Paseo
Paseo scores 62.1 (B) 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. Both do agent harnesses.
Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 1500 harnesses comparisons
Which one, for what
Best 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
Also in its favour
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
By default each request to DeepSeek's official API carries the session log, including message text, tool arguments and results, up to 8 MiB a request
Paseo B
Best for Developers who want parallel coding agents on their own machines with no telemetry, reachable from anywhere.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 50 against 38
- Security & auth, 58 against 40
- Transparency & trust, 68 against 53
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
- No incidents deducted, where DeepSeek Harness (dsh) loses 8 points for them
Watch for
Pre-1.0, at 0.15.3
Why the edge
Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.
Security & auth Paseo +18
DeepSeek Harness (dsh) 40
Harness reading of the framework checklist, 30 for what leaves the machine by default, 20 for approvals and sandboxing, 15 for prompt-injection posture, 15 for audit and 20 for the security programme. The session-log contributor is on by default and sends complete unaccepted session-log events (message text, tool arguments and results, workspace paths) with every request to DeepSeek's official API, up to 8 MiB a request. Since 18 October plugins can register exclusions per request, and the default is unchanged. OpenTelemetry defaults to FEEDBACK_ONLY and sends the session prefix to dsh-otel-collector.deepseeksvc.com after any feedback or rating. Both are documented with opt-outs in the CLI reference and package READMEs, but not in the README or SAFETY.md. Keys stay local (8). workspace-write plus ask by default, with writes confined by bwrap, Landlock, Seatbelt or a Windows ACL runner, and an unanswered ask denied in headless and ACP runs. Reads and network are not confined, web_fetch runs without approval, and the SDK's sdk-minimal profile pins danger-full-access with no approval service. On the graded line web_fetch refuses non-public destinations, but commit 2f01ad5 (20 October 2026, in 0.2.2-alpha.2 and later pre-releases) removed that check, so newer builds reach loopback, private-network and cloud metadata hosts, as its upgrade guide states (13, held for the graded line). SAFETY.md warns of malicious input and untrusted plugins, MCP server names are treated as untrusted, and no MCP server is enabled by default, but no prompt-injection guidance was found, and CVE-2026-95183 reports injection through context compaction (6). Local JSONL session logs record approval decisions as audit events (12). No SECURITY.md or security policy file in a clone of 4 November, no security.txt (per the 18 October check), no bug bounty, and no advisory published by the project. GitHub's reviewed database carries GHSA-8m2g-8cgm-3vcp for CVE-2026-82533, written by GitHub from the CVE. SAFETY.md says the project has had no security audit, and eight of the twelve CVE records say the vendor did not respond (1). 8 + 13 + 6 + 12 + 1 = 40.
Paseo 58
Harness reading. The README says no telemetry, tracking or forced log-ins (30 of 30). Worktree per agent, on your own machine (10 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). SECURITY.md (8). 30 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 8 = 58.
Transparency & trust Paseo +15
DeepSeek Harness (dsh) 53
MIT, Copyright 2026 DeepSeek, with third-party licences in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md (30). The package READMEs state what leaves the machine, the defaults, the collector address and that exports can include message text, tool arguments, results and workspace paths, but the project has no privacy policy or retention statement of its own, and uploads fall under DeepSeek's platform policy (14). The README warns of breaking changes, and per-version upgrade guides name removals and migrations, dated only by their pre-release, with no changelog or deprecation policy (3). Telemetry is disclosed with opt-outs by setting, Web switch and environment variable, though only in reference pages and not at the top of the README or in SAFETY.md (12). A Desktop product-analytics package (README since 24 September 2026) reports interaction events with device_id and user_id by default and no user-facing control, disclosed in its README. The Desktop app is outside the listed packages and the npm Web UI never sends these events, so no term. 30 + 14 + 3 + 12 = 59.
Paseo 68
Apache 2.0 for everything but third-party components (30). No telemetry and agents run on your machine (22 of 30). CHANGELOG.md, no deprecation policy (10). States no telemetry (20). 30 + 22 + 10 + 20 = 82.
Reliability Paseo +12
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.
Paseo 50
Local software. Desktop builds, an Android APK, a Docker image and a Nix package (20). ci.yml on the repository; 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). CHANGELOG.md (15). Version 0.15.3 (0). 20 + 15 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 50.
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.
Paseo 65
Harness reading. Public docs, a CLI and plugin examples in the repository (65).
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | DeepSeek Harness (dsh) | Paseo | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 38 | 50 | Paseo +12 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 77 | 65 | DeepSeek Harness (dsh) +12 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 68 | 70 | Paseo +2 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 40 | 58 | Paseo +18 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 71 | 75 | Paseo +4 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 53 | 68 | Paseo +15 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -8 | 0 | |
| Total | D 48.5/100 | B 62.1/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | DeepSeek Harness (dsh) | Paseo |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | DeepSeek | Mohamed Boudra |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-17 | 2026-11-07 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Popularity | 245k npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |
How the scores have moved
Paseo
No score change since it was listed.
Verdicts
DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
Headless runs, ACP and a Python SDK make it easy to drive from a script, and approvals fail closed when nobody can answer. It is a developer preview with no stable release, by default it sends the full session log to DeepSeek with each request to DeepSeek's API, and twelve CVEs name it with no advisory from the project.
Paseo
A self-hosted, open-source workspace for running many coding agents on your own machines, scriptable from the CLI and reachable from phone, web or desktop, with no telemetry or forced log-in. It's pre-1.0 and run largely by one maintainer.
Before you call either
DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- Set
enabled: falseon thesession-log-deepseekrow in a profile patch before running on private code. Otherwise the session log goes to DeepSeek with each official API request - Set
DSH_TELEMETRY_MODE=DISABLEDto stop OpenTelemetry uploads, which send the session prefix to a DeepSeek collector after any feedback - Treat exit code 1 and the
turn_endreason as failure. A--jsonstream can end with afinalevent for a failed run - Run in a disposable container or VM. The sandbox doesn't confine reads or network, and SAFETY.md says the project has had no security audit
- Pin the version. npm
latestandnextdiffer, the README warns of breaking changes, and 0.2.2 pre-releases letweb_fetchreach private hosts
Paseo
- Run the daemon on the machine that has your tools and credentials, and connect from the clients
- Script runs from the CLI for repeatable agent jobs
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, DeepSeek Harness (dsh) or Paseo?
Paseo scores 62.1 (B) 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.
Are DeepSeek Harness (dsh) and Paseo open source?
Yes. DeepSeek Harness (dsh) is open source (MIT). Paseo is open source (Apache-2.0).
Other comparisons with DeepSeek Harness (dsh) or Paseo
- Agent Zero vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- Agent Zero vs Paseo
- Aider vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- Aider vs Paseo
- Amp vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- Amp vs Paseo
- Antigravity CLI vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- Antigravity CLI vs Paseo
- Auggie CLI vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- Auggie CLI vs Paseo
- AXLR vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- AXLR vs Paseo
- Claude Code vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- Claude Code vs Paseo
- Cline vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- Cline vs Paseo
- Conductor vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- Conductor vs Paseo
- Crush vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- Crush vs Paseo
- Cursor CLI vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- Cursor CLI vs Paseo
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs dsh-superagent (DeepSeek)
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Devin
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Droid CLI
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Pi
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Emdash
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Gemini CLI
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs GitHub Copilot CLI
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs goose
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Harness²
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs HarnessRouter
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Jules
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Junie CLI
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Kilo Code CLI
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Kimi Code CLI
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Kiro CLI
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Letta
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs mini-swe-agent
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs MiniMax Code
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Mistral Vibe CLI
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Muse Code
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs OpenAI Agents API
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs OpenAI Codex
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs OpenCode
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs OpenHands
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs OpenMausBot
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Orca
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Prime Agent
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Qoder CLI
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Qwen Code
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Mirror CLI
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Rovo Dev CLI
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Sculptor
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs T3 Code
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Traycer
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Unstoppable
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Verdent
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Vibe-Trading
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- dsh-superagent (DeepSeek) vs Paseo
- Devin vs Paseo
- Droid CLI vs Paseo
- Pi vs Paseo
- Emdash vs Paseo
- Gemini CLI vs Paseo
- GitHub Copilot CLI vs Paseo
- goose vs Paseo
- Harness² vs Paseo
- HarnessRouter vs Paseo
- Jules vs Paseo
- Junie CLI vs Paseo
- Kilo Code CLI vs Paseo
- Kimi Code CLI vs Paseo
- Kiro CLI vs Paseo
- Letta vs Paseo
- mini-swe-agent vs Paseo
- MiniMax Code vs Paseo
- Mistral Vibe CLI vs Paseo
- Muse Code vs Paseo
- OpenAI Agents API vs Paseo
- OpenAI Codex vs Paseo
- OpenCode vs Paseo
- OpenHands vs Paseo
- Orca vs Paseo
- Paseo vs Prime Agent
- Paseo vs Qoder CLI
- Paseo vs Qwen Code
- Paseo vs Mirror CLI
- Paseo vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Paseo vs Sculptor
- Paseo vs T3 Code
- Paseo vs Traycer
- Paseo vs Unstoppable
- Paseo vs Verdent
- Paseo vs Vibe-Trading
- Paseo vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Clawboo vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- Clawboo vs Paseo
- CLI Manager vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- CLI Manager vs Paseo
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Harness
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Paperclip
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Parallax
- Harness vs Paseo
- OpenMausBot vs Paseo
- Paperclip vs Paseo
- Parallax vs Paseo
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/deepseek-harness-vs-paseo.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/deepseek-harness.json·/api/v1/tools/paseo.json - From a terminal
anchor compare deepseek-harness paseo(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "deepseek-harness", "b": "paseo"}at/mcp, no key