deepseek capabilities
12 mapped capabilities, each graded and dated. This is the diagnosis — the migration guide is the cure.
Capabilities
API context caching (disk-based prefix cache)
provisionalverified 2 days agoThe DeepSeek API automatically caches repeated prompt prefixes on disk, dramatically reducing cost and first-token latency for workloads that reuse the same system prompt or long context across multiple requests.
Chat history with search
provisionalverified 2 days agoDeepSeek persists conversation history across sessions, accessible in the sidebar. A chat history search feature allows users to find past conversations by content.
Chat models (V3 / V4 series)
provisionalverified 2 days agoDeepSeek chat offers access to its frontier general-purpose models — currently DeepSeek-V4-Flash and DeepSeek-V4-Pro — for conversational AI, coding, math, and long-form reasoning.
Data residency and privacy posture (China-stored)
provisionalverified 2 days agoAll user data — including chat content, uploaded files, account details, and device signals — is stored on servers located in the People's Republic of China, subject to Chinese law, which may require disclosure to authorities without independent court oversight.
DeepThink (R1) reasoning mode
provisionalverified 2 days agoA togglable reasoning mode powered by DeepSeek-R1 that shows explicit chain-of-thought steps before delivering its final answer. Suited for complex math, logic, code debugging, and multi-step analysis.
Developer API (platform.deepseek.com)
provisionalverified 2 days agoA REST API exposing DeepSeek's frontier models to developers, compatible with the OpenAI and Anthropic SDK interfaces, supporting chat completions, tool calls, JSON output, FIM completion, and streaming.
File upload and document Q&A
provisionalverified 2 days agoUsers can upload documents (PDF, DOCX, TXT, CSV, XLSX) and ask questions about their contents. DeepSeek extracts and processes text from the uploaded files to answer queries, summarize, or analyze.
Free consumer access (no subscription)
provisionalverified 2 days agoThe DeepSeek web and mobile chat interface is entirely free to use with no paid subscription tiers, no ads, and no per-message charges for end users.
Image upload with OCR and visual understanding
provisionalverified 2 days agoUsers can upload images (JPG, PNG, WebP) and DeepSeek will extract text via OCR and answer questions about the image content, supporting both printed and handwritten text.
Open-weight model releases (MIT license)
provisionalverified 2 days agoDeepSeek publishes full model weights for its frontier models under the MIT license, allowing self-hosting, fine-tuning, distillation, and commercial use without restrictions.
Web search mode
provisionalverified 2 days agoAn opt-in search toggle that queries the live web and integrates retrieved results into the model's response, providing up-to-date information beyond the model's training cutoff.