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DeepSeek (Recommended)

Uses SSE streaming with OpenAI-compatible tool-calling format. DeepSeek is Wolffish’s recommended default provider for agentic tasks. Following the permanent 75% price cut (May 2026), the V4 family delivers frontier-class reasoning and tool-use reliability at 29–34× less than competing frontier models on output-heavy workloads — while matching or exceeding their agentic performance on multi-step tool chains. It’s also MIT-licensed, so you can self-host for $0 in API fees if you have the infra. Since v1.0.235, connecting DeepSeek auto-selects V4 Flash — frontier-class at a third of Pro’s price, and fast enough for the tool-heavy turns most agentic work is made of. V4 Pro is still one pick away in the composer’s model switch for the heavier reasoning jobs. Best for: Agentic multi-step workflows, tool calling, research chains, cost-efficient daily automations.
If you’re setting up Wolffish for the first time and want one provider that does it all — reliable tool use, strong reasoning, fast responses, minimal cost — start with DeepSeek and leave it on the V4 Flash default. You can always add Anthropic or OpenAI later for specific use cases.

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Getting an API Key

  1. Go to platform.deepseek.com
  2. Sign up or log in
  3. Navigate to API Keys and create a new key
  4. Paste it into Wolffish → Settings → Models → DeepSeek

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Models

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Reasoning modes

The brain icon next to the message box controls how this model reasons. Click it to cycle through the modes the selected model supports. Two separate ideas combine here:

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Thinking — whether the model reasons

  • Off — the model answers immediately. Fastest and cheapest; ideal for simple, direct tasks.
  • On — the model first works through the problem in a dedicated reasoning pass before replying. Slower and uses more tokens, but markedly more accurate on multi-step, logical, or ambiguous tasks.

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Effort — how hard it thinks

Only effort-capable models expose this; it applies once thinking is on.
  • High — standard reasoning depth. The right default for most agentic work.
  • Max — the model reasons longer and deeper for the hardest problems. More tokens and latency in exchange for higher quality on complex work.

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Button states

Each model shows only the states it genuinely supports. If a model always reasons (can’t be turned off) or has no effort control, the button reflects that and locks where there’s nothing to change. Wolffish remembers your choice per model. On DeepSeek: Both V4 models support Off / High / Max. In current testing High and Max produce similar depth, but Max is exposed so it benefits automatically if DeepSeek differentiates the tiers later.

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Model Selection & Retries

Wolffish communicates with LLMs via nine cloud providers plus a local option, all using pure fetch() — no SDKs. Each provider has its own streaming format and tool-calling convention, which wernicke.ts normalizes into a single interface. Select your Brain model explicitly from the model switch beside the chat input — the model you choose is the one that runs. There’s no cascade or fallback order; for parallel work, switch the chat into workflow mode, where the master can run agents on any connected model, DeepSeek included. When a cloud Brain hits a transient error, thalamus retries the same model on a backoff schedule (it also uses net.isOnline() for instant offline detection). It does not route you to a different provider on failure.