DeepSeek's Harness agent platform hits 1.54M daily users, plans developer marketplace

DeepSeek's Harness, an open-source agent framework launched August 13, now serves 1.54 million daily active users and processes roughly 92 trillion tokens per day, according to reporting from The Star and SCMP. The ecosystem includes about 35,000 third-party plugins, and DeepSeek plans a developer marketplace with token grants and technical support for plugin authors.

Harness follows the plugin-ecosystem model: the core framework orchestrates agent loops while third-party plugins supply tools and integrations. Token grants are a direct subsidy to builders, an approach designed to grow the catalog quickly and keep developers on DeepSeek models.

The numbers land amid a wider shift in China's agent market. Alibaba's QwenWork is gaining as ByteDance winds down Coze Enterprise Edition and Tencent terminates its Yuanqi agent platform, consolidating agents inside cloud and collaboration products. Globally, Menlo Ventures data shows Chinese models take 89% of corporate open-source AI spend, with DeepSeek at 15%. SCMP framed the question as whether DeepSeek can challenge OpenAI and Anthropic in agents.

Users are not uncritical. X posters called the DAU figure "wild" validation of plugin ecosystems, but r/DeepSeek threads report 20x token bloat and infinite loops when too many plugins load. Watch for marketplace launch terms and quality controls on plugins.