LAYER 01 · Build the mental model

The six-plane system map

Compress 49 package families into a responsibility map instead of memorizing names

14 min3 source anchorsupstream@47f9438
composition → spine → capability → control → truth → surface
The question this chapter resolves

Across thousands of source files, how do you decide where new behavior belongs?

Build intuition

You do not understand a city by memorizing street names. Start with zoning: planning composes it, transit moves work, utilities provide capability, regulation controls risk, archives preserve facts, and public counters expose services.

MECHANISM

Mechanism

The composition plane builds the plugin tree; the agent spine advances turns; capability planes provide seams such as LLM, FS, shell, and subagents; the control plane constrains execution through events, guards, approvals, and sandboxing.

The truth plane uses SessionEvent as its source of truth; surfaces adapt protocols and project state rather than owning another agent core.

Step 1 of 6

Compose product

Profiles, bundles, and patches produce the runtime tree.

INVARIANTS

What extensions must preserve

  • Surfaces are not the business source of truth
  • A capability seam names definition, provider, and consumer
  • Durable facts and live control events are not interchangeable
FAILURE MODES

The tempting wrong turns

  • ×Using directory hierarchy as the architecture model
  • ×Treating every event as replayable
  • ×Assuming the Web UI directly drives a model SDK
VERIFY IN SOURCE

Do not trust the conclusion—verify it

These anchors are pinned to official deepseek-harness@47f9438; account for later breaking changes when reading current upstream.

KNOWLEDGE CHECK

Pause for ten seconds before revealing

Why must the UI not become the source of session state?

Why the next chapter follows

Next we build a source-reading method using graph docs, service catalogs, and event catalogs to find real control points.

Learn DeepSeek Harness

An independent learning project. Explanations derive from source; upstream remains authoritative.