I've been running an API gateway for DeepSeek for a while now, and I see hundreds of developers' usage patterns every day. One thing keeps coming up: DeepSeek by default is a people-pleaser.

If you say "I think X is the best approach," it'll say "Great point! X is indeed a solid choice." That's fine for brainstorming, but when you're debugging or planning, that behavior is dangerous. It won't tell you you're wrong. It won't poke holes in your plan.

So I started testing ways to break it out of that mode. Here's what actually worked:

1. "Don't flatter me. If my idea is flawed, say so directly. I need honest feedback, not validation."

After this, the tone shifts. It points out edge cases, questions assumptions, pushes back.

2. "Argue against my proposal. What are the three strongest reasons this could fail?"

Forces it into devil's advocate mode. Use before important decisions.

3. "You are a senior code reviewer. Find bugs and design flaws. Be harsh."

Role-setting changes expectations. It stops trying to be nice, starts being useful.

4. "On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you? If below 7, tell me what you're uncertain about."

Flags its own weak spots instead of confidently making things up.

5. The one I haven't seen elsewhere: ask it to argue with itself.

I ask DeepSeek to generate two responses: one supporting my idea, one attacking it. Then I ask it to judge which argument is stronger. The attacking response often surfaces issues the supporting one completely ignores.

These aren't magic prompts. They're just ways to override the default "agreeable assistant" behavior.

I'll be sharing one small tip like this every day — practical stuff to get real work done with AI. If you've got your own tricks, drop them in the comments.

"... DeepSeek v4.1-flash-1017 just got spotted in DeepSeek's own API for a few minutes before vanishing. New checkpoint, changed fingerprint. The 1017 suffix matches their dated snapshot pattern."

I was led to believe there was a door prize for the 10B token club?

I'm the author of Distill, an open-source coding agent harness (Apache-2.0): https://github.com/samuelfaj/distill

Use case: running DeepSeek as a coding agent without it timing out or burning tokens on every small step.

What I tested: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at max effort in native Codex (through OpenRouter) against Distill with DeepSeek as the main model and free models from the OpenRouter free router as the worker. Three frozen coding tasks, three runs each, same 300s deadline.

Results:

• Successful runs: 5/9 native vs 9/9 Distill
• Time: 1974s vs 490s
• Cost: at least $0.098 vs $0.012

Chart with the other model pairs: /img/q12ttj8lkwvh1.png

Caveats: native Codex warned about missing model metadata in all nine DeepSeek runs and fell back to default metadata, so this wasn't an officially supported Codex profile. Three native calls timed out without usage receipts, so the native cost is only a lower bound. It's a small benchmark.

BENCHMARKS.md in the repo has the full numbers and the commands to rerun it. Has anyone else run DeepSeek in a planner/worker setup?

The consumer interface in https://chat.deepseek.com suffers from:
- Poor instruction following = Not replying in english at times and using bold text in replies even when asked not to
- Hallucinations and making up facts = Assumes things when its not the case
- Poor context management and forgets file details in a long chat = Difficult for studies and verification tasks

Lets send an email to [service@deepseek.com](mailto:service@deepseek.com) requesting for fixes to these. We all enjoy using DeepSeek but the consumer-facing interface could definitely do with some improvements.

As claude and gemini has instilled watermarks in their reponses, does DS also has a watermark like that?

if not, do you think it will be implemented tn future?

DeepSeek feels kinda different lately. I’ve noticed that its responses are noticeably slower when I generate random micro-RP scenes and ask it to expand them into longer ones. The slowdown is pretty noticeable, and it makes me wonder if something’s changed behind the scenes. Could this be a sign that DeepSeek V4.1 Pro is on the way? 👀

Background

I have been using chat.deepseek.com since February 2026 as an orchestrator: I use it to write and refine the prompts that I then run through the DeepSeek API. This is hobby work - I have no commercial interest.

What changed for me

Around the price change this summer I also noticed the output quality dropping. Since then the gap between the two surfaces has become obvious to me:

• The API is still usable for my work. That is why I keep using it.
• The web chat is no longer usable for me. It produces incorrect work, and in a few cases its instructions damaged a project I was working on instead of advancing it. Hallucinated details make it worse: I can no longer tell a solid answer from a plausible-sounding one without verifying everything myself.

I do not want to overstate this. I have no insight into what changed internally, and I am not claiming that the price change caused it - I am reporting what I observe as a long-time user: the same task, handled fine through the API, is not handled reliably in the web chat.

What I hope for

That DeepSeek restores the web chat to a level where it can be trusted for real work again. It was my entry point into all of this and my prompt workshop.

Question

Has anyone else compared the same task across the API and the web chat recently? Concrete examples (task, expected result, what the web chat produced) would help more than another general complaint.

• A disappointed DeepSeek user, still using the API

Is the free chat function really that bad as people here make it out to be?

I had some problems but most of the time it gives a solid result.

Of course I will need to make some more important work and I was thinking of paying for Claude.

Is it better to use this DeepSeek free chat or is it bad enough to just go straight to a paid subscription?

Depois da queda de ontem eu notei que as respostas ficaram um pouquinho melhores, embora ele se perca demais em detalhes e ainda está com inconsistências. Mas vi hoje que tivemos uma nova atualização, podem me dizer o que estão achando? Se alguém já notou algum avanço ou melhora na memória, escrita e desempenho. Boa noite!

I use DeepSeek via DeepClaude in Claude Code. Whenever I switch from Sonnet 5.5 to DeepSeek, I notice that similar challenges take longer. He seems more thorough, and the quality is maybe slightly better, but he used tons of tokens for it. Just tested the samen taks same effort; Sonnet 5.5 took 2.31 minutes, Deepseek took over 12 minutes. Anybody else have similair experiences or can someone explain to me why this could be?

Insane cache hit.

Does that mean DeepSeek is weak or not so smart in ARC AGI 3? I really hope it will have it as soon as possible, intelligence is FAR more valuable than knowledge

Sorry in advance for my English.

So, I paid for API to roleplay with deepseek as I used to do with website until recent model was launched.

I chose v 4 pro, set temperature to 1,35, filled all necessary info, and I just don't see any difference. Responses are dry, short, lack details. Where are my long beautiful engaging texts?

What else should I do or pay attention to? Any advice, please, from someone who is lucky to enjoy the roleplay.

hey guys, just want to know your thoughts about the deepseek search & fetch api. i've been finding ai search engine like exa, tavily and etc. deepseek search api is way cheaper than those existing ai search engine. i haven't tried the api yet. just want to know how was your experince with it (if you have any).

reference:

https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/search

Having zero coding skills and not working with this field, I've managed to code a Space Sim with DeepSeek. It's a 100% procedural, browser depedent game with zero dependencies. It features an entire universe generated from a single 300KB HTML file. It's open-source (MIT). Still being developed.

GitHub Repository

Singularvs, as I've called, is a contemplative space simulator inspired by SpaceEngine and the 1984 classic Elite. It features a ~1 Gpc universe with procedural galaxies, hierarchical star systems (up to 8 stars, brown dwarfs, black holes), almost scientifically classified planets, internal tectonic simulations, dynamic skies, and even procedural music.

I didn't write a single line of code by hand. I used natural language to describe what I wanted, the AI wrote, I ran, tested, debugged, answered what happened and so on. By iterating back and forth for 3 days, this is the result. Also, only English and Portuguese as of now. I know both languages and reviewed them too.

• Vanilla JavaScript
• Zero external libraries, zero assets
• Deterministic PRNG
• Xinput controller support (I've only tested my Gamesir Controller)

It's fully open-source and moddable. I do not guarantee it has zero glitches or flaws. But I hope it fits here.

Now, why does the response look like it's from DeepSeek V4? Or is it actually a downgrade from DeepSeek 3.2?

Ok, so I recently found the new TTS feature on the DeepSeek web client. Real talk... it is crazy good.

I want to build stuff with this, but it's inconvenient that I can only interact with it via the web right now.

Just some feedback (at least in my testing):

- Tested it with Vietnamese. If the text is "1. Tiêu đề 1", it literally reads "one, Tiêu đề one". Mixing English numbers with Vietnamese words sounds funny as hell.

- Another thing: it completely skips tables (doesn't read them) but decides to read links out loud.

Hope you guys take notes on this. Happy to contribute more once you open it up!

Btw, Stella's voice is totally my bias fr.

;s proof for the haters https://limewire.com/d/P3O9b#UcRz85Ao74

I tried to use Claude code but with Deepseek API backend, then asked it about Tiannamen square 1989, and it answered normally to my surprise. I thought the model is censored ???

Today, my ds platform API credit hit 0, and im not refilling it, ds4.1 flash has become unusable for technical tasks, as main or sub agent.

I've claude sub, and local gpus, but since 4.0 routed much of my sub tasks to a DS agent, every week it get worst, you need to constantly rewrite more rigid prompts so it does not start testing every single thing in the env, creating new scripts to modify a line in a file(many times wrong) and starting new epic resarch lines when asked to do basic stuff.

As its served today its not usable, so sadly waiting for next model release and hoping for some iq back.

Qwen 3.8 and opus 5.5 are in a totally different league in instruction following, coding and day to day usage, wired that a 27b model on my 24gb 5 year old cards beat it by a wide margin.

Hows ur experience lately?