DeepSeek

Tip

To use Letta with the DeepSeek API, set the environment variable DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=...

You can use Letta with DeepSeek if you have a DeepSeek account and API key. Once you have set your DEEPSEEK_API_KEY in your environment variables, you can select what model and configure the context window size.

Danger

Please note that R1 doesn’t natively support function calling in DeepSeek API and V3 function calling is unstable, which may result in unstable tool calling inside of Letta agents.

Danger

The DeepSeek API for R1 is often down. Please make sure you can connect to DeepSeek API directly by running:

curl https://api.deepseek.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DEEPSEEK_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
        "model": "deepseek-reasoner",
        "messages": [
          {"role": "system", "content": "You are a helpful assistant."},
          {"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}
        ],
        "stream": false
      }'

Enabling DeepSeek with Docker

To enable DeepSeek models when running the Letta server with Docker, set your DEEPSEEK_API_KEY as an environment variable:

# replace `~/.letta/.persist/pgdata` with wherever you want to store your agent data
docker run \
  -v ~/.letta/.persist/pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data \
  -p 8283:8283 \
  -e DEEPSEEK_API_KEY="your_deepseek_api_key" \
  letta/letta:latest

See the self-hosting guide for more information on running Letta with Docker.