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DeepSeek in Claude Code, the setup.

Cheap models · Better systems

AI Operators — watch me run this stack live →

The setup below is one wire in a bigger machine. Inside AI Operators I show the whole thing — my content engine, my funnels, and the real numbers, live every week.

01 · Get a key

Create an API key at platform.deepseek.com and load a few dollars. Pricing: $0.14 per million input tokens, $0.28 output — and cache hits drop to $0.003 (a 98% discount that ranks #1 of all 101 models tracked by Artificial Analysis).

02 · Two environment variables

export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://api.deepseek.com/anthropic
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=<your deepseek key>
claude

That's the whole setup — DeepSeek ships an Anthropic-compatible endpoint, documented here. Open a new terminal without the variables and you're back on regular Claude.

03 · The gotchas

  • • It's a reasoning model — long thinking on hard tasks. Great for real work, slower for quick edits.
  • • 1M-token context, but verbose output (about 2x the median model) — cheap tokens, just more of them.
  • • Keep your real Claude setup for the tasks where frontier polish matters; route the volume work to the cheap endpoint. Cheap models, better systems.
  • • Model quality check: it scores 50 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index — #3 of 101. Median is 25. See the live benchmarks.

This is one wire in a bigger machine. If you want to see how I run cheap models inside systems that make money — my content engine, my funnels, the numbers — AI Operators is where I show everything.