DeepSeek — Run DeepSeek Models Across Your Local Fleet#

Run DeepSeek-V3, DeepSeek-R1, and DeepSeek-Coder on your own hardware. The fleet router picks the best device for every request — no cloud API needed, zero per-token costs, all data stays on your machines.

Supported DeepSeek models#

ModelParametersOllama nameBest forDeepSeek-V3671B MoE (37B active)deepseek-v3General — matches GPT-4o on most benchmarksDeepSeek-V3.1671B MoEdeepseek-v3.1Hybrid thinking/non-thinking modesDeepSeek-V3.2671B MoEdeepseek-v3.2Improved reasoning + agent performanceDeepSeek-R11.5B–671Bdeepseek-r1Reasoning — approaches O3 and Gemini 2.5 ProDeepSeek-Coder1.3B–33Bdeepseek-coderCode generation (87% code, 13% NL training)DeepSeek-Coder-V2236B MoE (21B active)deepseek-coder-v2Code — matches GPT-4 Turbo on code tasks

Setup#

bash

pip install ollama-herd
herd              # start the router (port 11435)
herd-node         # run on each machine

# Pull a DeepSeek model
ollama pull deepseek-r1:70b

Package: ollama-herd | Repo: github.com/geeks-accelerator/ollama-herd

Use DeepSeek through the fleet#

OpenAI SDK#

python

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(base_url="http://localhost:11435/v1", api_key="not-needed")

# DeepSeek-R1 for reasoning
response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="deepseek-r1:70b",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Prove that there are infinitely many primes"}],
    stream=True,
)
for chunk in response:
    print(chunk.choices[0].delta.content or "", end="")

DeepSeek-Coder for code#

python

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="deepseek-coder-v2:16b",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Write a Redis cache decorator in Python"}],
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Ollama API#

bash

# DeepSeek-V3 general chat
curl http://localhost:11435/api/chat -d '{
  "model": "deepseek-v3",
  "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Explain quantum computing"}],
  "stream": false
}'

# DeepSeek-R1 reasoning
curl http://localhost:11435/api/chat -d '{
  "model": "deepseek-r1:70b",
  "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Solve this step by step: ..."}],
  "stream": false
}'

Hardware recommendations#

DeepSeek models are large. Here's what fits where:

ModelMin RAMRecommended hardwaredeepseek-r1:1.5b4GBAny Macdeepseek-r1:7b8GBMac Mini M4 (16GB)deepseek-r1:14b12GBMac Mini M4 (24GB)deepseek-r1:32b24GBMac Mini M4 Pro (48GB)deepseek-r1:70b48GBMac Studio M4 Max (128GB)deepseek-coder-v2:16b12GBMac Mini M4 (24GB)deepseek-v3256GB+Mac Studio M3 Ultra (512GB)

The fleet router automatically sends requests to the machine where the model is loaded — no manual routing needed.

Why run DeepSeek locally#

• Zero cost — DeepSeek API charges per token. Local is free after hardware.
• Privacy — code and business data never leave your network.
• No rate limits — DeepSeek API throttles during peak hours. Local has no throttle.
• Availability — DeepSeek API has had outages. Your hardware doesn't depend on their servers.
• Fleet routing — multiple machines share the load. One busy? Request goes to the next.

Fleet features#

• 7-signal scoring — picks the optimal node for every request
• Auto-retry — fails over to next best node transparently
• VRAM-aware fallback — routes to a loaded model in the same category instead of cold-loading
• Context protection — prevents expensive model reloads from num_ctx changes
• Request tagging — track per-project DeepSeek usage

Also available on this fleet#

Other LLM models#

Llama 3.3, Qwen 3.5, Phi 4, Mistral, Gemma 3 — any Ollama model routes through the same endpoint.

Image generation#

bash

curl -o image.png http://localhost:11435/api/generate-image \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"model":"z-image-turbo","prompt":"a sunset","width":1024,"height":1024,"steps":4}'

Speech-to-text#

bash

curl http://localhost:11435/api/transcribe -F "audio=@recording.wav"

Embeddings#

bash

curl http://localhost:11435/api/embeddings -d '{"model":"nomic-embed-text","prompt":"query"}'

Dashboard#

http://localhost:11435/dashboard — monitor DeepSeek requests alongside all other models. Per-model latency, token throughput, health checks.

Full documentation#

Agent Setup Guide

Guardrails#

• Never pull or delete DeepSeek models without user confirmation — downloads are 4-400+ GB.
• Never delete or modify files in ~/.fleet-manager/.
• If a DeepSeek model is too large for available memory, suggest a smaller variant.