2026-10-24-deepseek-harness-search-and-fetch-apis-add-an-opt-in-hosted-retrieval-route-with-separate-prompt-egress

Search and Fetch APIs add an opt-in hosted retrieval route with separate prompt egress. Web Search settings can select DeepSeek Search and Fetch APIs together. The route is off by default; existing Messages search and local HTTP fetch remain the default. API mode sends queries or requested URLs to the hosted service and, with default sendOriginalQuestion=true, up to 128 Unicode characters of the latest human question as ori_question. Retrieval billing is separate from model-token billing. Provider failures do not silently retry through another route. Fetch’s successful Markdown result does not certify the original website’s HTTP status.

Channel: preview-or-beta. Half: both. Date: 2026-10-17.

Operator consequence: Try rc.2 or rc.3 when hosted retrieval removes local extraction work, but review the extra question fragment and destination before enabling it. Disable sendOriginalQuestion if the query alone is the intended disclosure. Handle failures explicitly and avoid treating the provider’s success status as an origin-server receipt. Intel Desktop’s observed rc.1 feed does not contain this integration.

Receipt

• https://github.com/deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness/releases/tag/dsh-v0.2.1-rc.2
• https://github.com/deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness/blob/1f81c047fc48fa190a683e469daa699857e9afe8/packages/web/web-deepseek-api/README.md
• https://github.com/deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness/blob/1f81c047fc48fa190a683e469daa699857e9afe8/packages/web/web-deepseek-api/src/search.ts