Four run modes

Goal

Choose a DeepSeek Harness preset that matches your job before you customize plugins.

Standard

Full coding-agent surface: file edits, shell, search, skills, planning, goals, sub-agents, and workflows. Default for day-to-day repository work once you trust workspace permissions.

PTC

Keeps Standard capabilities but presents tools through a Code Mode SDK. The model can author a TypeScript program that composes multi-step tool use in one shot — useful when orchestration beats chatty single calls.

Minimal

Only a persistent bash tool and str_replace_editor. Ideal for model evals and ablation studies where a rich plugin set would confound results.

Creative

Standard powers plus runtime inspection and in-memory Cordis experiments for designing new agent presets. Treat it as a lab, not your first production profile.

Decision cheat-sheet

| You want… | Start with |
|-----------|------------|
| Daily coding | Standard |
| Multi-step coded orchestration | PTC |
| Benchmarks / tiny surface | Minimal |
| New presets / plugin experiments | Creative |

More detail: Modes.

Next

Decide which surface (Web UI vs headless/SDK) matches interactive work vs CI.