DeepSeek + LibreChat: Complete Setup Guide

This guide shows you how to add DeepSeek Chat and DeepSeek Reasoner (R1) models to LibreChat.

Works with:

• Coolify Cloud deployments
• LibreChat v1.2.8 or newer
• DeepSeek API key

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✅ Step 1 — Get Your DeepSeek API Key

Create one here:

🔗 https://platform.deepseek.com

Copy the key (it starts with sk-).

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🔐 Step 2 — SSH Into Your Coolify Server

Open a terminal and run:

ssh your-username@your-server-ip

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📁 Step 3 — Find Your LibreChat Folder

Coolify creates random service folders.

Run:

sudo find /data/coolify/services -maxdepth 2 -name ".env"

This will output paths like:

/data/coolify/services/xxxxx123456/.env

The folder containing .env and docker-compose.yml is your LibreChat service folder.

Save that path — we’ll call it:

YOUR_LIBRECHAT_PATH

Example:

/data/coolify/services/xxxxx123456

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🧩 Step 4 — Add Your DeepSeek Key to .env

Edit the .env inside your LibreChat path:

sudo nano YOUR_LIBRECHAT_PATH/.env

Add this line at the bottom:

DEEPSEEK_API_KEY="your-real-api-key"

Save and exit:

• CTRL + O → Enter
• CTRL + X

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🖥 Step 5 — Create or Update librechat.yaml

Run:

sudo tee YOUR_LIBRECHAT_PATH/librechat.yaml > /dev/null << 'EOF'
version: 1.2.8
cache: true

endpoints:
  custom:
    - name: "Deepseek"
      apiKey: "${DEEPSEEK_API_KEY}"
      baseURL: "<https://api.deepseek.com/v1>"
      models:
        default: ["deepseek-chat", "deepseek-reasoner"]
        fetch: false
      modelDisplayLabel: "Deepseek"
EOF

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🔄 Step 6 — Restart LibreChat

Run:

sudo docker compose -f YOUR_LIBRECHAT_PATH/docker-compose.yml down
sudo docker compose -f YOUR_LIBRECHAT_PATH/docker-compose.yml up -d --build

Wait 10–20 seconds.

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🎯 Step 7 — Activate in LibreChat

1. Open LibreChat in your browser
2. Hard refresh (CTRL+SHIFT+R or CMD+SHIFT+R)
3. Open the model list
4. Search for: DeepSeek

You should now see:

Deepseek
 ├─ deepseek-chat
 └─ deepseek-reasoner (R1)

Select one → start chatting 🚀

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🛠 Troubleshooting

Issue	Fix
Deepseek doesn’t show	YAML spacing wrong → redo step 5
Only one model shows	Restart again
Unauthorized (401)	Wrong API key or missing quotes
UI unchanged	Hard-refresh browser or use incognito

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🧩 Optional Add-Ons

• Make DeepSeek default
• Add OpenRouter, Groq, Mistral, Gemini, Claude
• Add per-user API keys

(If you want, I can generate a separate "multi-provider version.")

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🎉 Done!

You now have DeepSeek — including the R1 reasoning model — integrated with LibreChat inside Coolify Cloud.