What is DeepSeek TUI?
DeepSeek TUI is a full-screen terminal user interface for an AI coding agent—not a browser chat window and not a VS Code extension. It can read and edit files, search your repo, run shell commands, work with git, call tools through MCP, and run parallel-style workflows with RLM. It is MIT-licensed, written in Rust, and aimed at people who already live in the terminal.
Operation modes matter day to day: Plan keeps work read-only (no writes, no shell). Agent is the usual coding mode with approvals for risky steps. YOLO auto-approves actions—powerful, but only for environments you fully trust.
Why people use DeepSeek TUI
Many users pair DeepSeek TUI with DeepSeek V4-Flash because API pricing is relatively low for long sessions. Official rates include roughly $0.14 per million input tokens on cache miss and much cheaper cache-hit input for repeated prefixes—plus low output pricing compared with premium closed models. That combination makes “leave the agent running on my repo” realistic for individuals and small teams.
DeepSeek V4-Pro costs more but can be worth it for harder reasoning. Check the current rate card on DeepSeek’s site—promotional pricing has been published with an end date (noted on our pricing page).
How it fits with DeepSeek models
DeepSeek TUI is the tooling layer; DeepSeek V4, R1, V3, Coder, and VL families are the models you route through providers. You can use DeepSeek’s official API or compatible hosts (OpenRouter, Fireworks, NVIDIA NIM, local stacks such as Ollama, vLLM, or SGLang—see Configuration). Your hardware and latency tradeoffs live mostly under Local deployment.
Quick comparison with other coding agents
| Tool | Primary models | Runtime | Parallel workflows | Cost angle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek TUI | DeepSeek V4 (typical) | Rust TUI | RLM-oriented patterns | Often low with V4-Flash |
| Claude Code | Claude Sonnet / Opus | Node | Task-style agents | Higher retail API pricing |
| Aider | OpenAI-compatible | Python | Varies | Depends on chosen model |
| OpenCode | OpenAI-compatible | Go | Varies | Depends on chosen model |
Video overview
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