DeepClaude – Claude Code agent loop with DeepSeek V4 Pro, 17x cheaper

126•alattaran•2h ago

Comments

orliesaurus•1h ago

Is there a way to do this directly by using claudecode CLI (which I already have installed) and openrouter??

theanonymousone•1h ago

Yes, from Claude Code themselves: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/llm-gateway

gnat•1h ago

This repo's README explains how it works and you can do it yourself. claude looks for environment variables that say which API endpoint to talk to, which key to pass, which model name to use for haiku/sonnet/opus-level workloads, etc.

vitaflo•1h ago

Yes, Deepseek even documents how:

https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/agent_integrations...

jubilanti•17m ago

Here's a oneliner:

   ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://openrouter.ai/api" ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="$OPENROUTER_API_KEY" ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL="deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash" CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC=1 claude

esafak•1h ago

Why wouldn't you use something open source like OpenCode, which already support DSv4 and has more features than CC?

ttoinou•1h ago

More features than CC ?

Also opencode tracks you by default. Its not safe. Every first prompt you send is routed through their servers, logged and they can use your data however they want

esafak•47m ago

I could not find any evidence of prompt logging. The code is open; can you point me to it?

sedawkgrep•46m ago

I thought this was debunked awhile ago. ?

dlx•1h ago

As someone who does use other models with CC, I am curious about opencode, what extra features does it have that you find essential?

esafak•55m ago

I like being able to add a wide array of models, define perms for agents and subagents, turn MCPs on and off at will, and be able to fix bugs I find in it.

dlx•39m ago

fair enough...any drawbacks that you've found?

esafak•37m ago

Its UI isn't as slick, and it has bugs, but so does CC and you can submit a PR to have them fixed in OC.

CharlesW•14m ago

Coding harnesses make a big difference, and OpenCode is notably less effective than Claude Code (1) in my experience, (2) with the models I've tried it on. (I've not yet tried it with DSv4.)

_345•1h ago

If you're okay with sonnet level performance, this sounds like a straight upgrade. But I find that sonnet messes up too much, that it ends up not being worth cost optimizing down to using it or another sonnet-level model. Glad to have this as an option though

2ndorderthought•1h ago

A lot of people are having good experiences doing things like using opus for designing and using locally hosted qwen3.6 for implementation.

I could see a serious cost reduction story by using opus for design and deepseek for implementation.

Personally I would avoid anthropic entirely. But I get why people don't.

girvo•1h ago

Like me: that’s what I do. Either Opus 4.7 or GLM 5.1 for planning, write it out to a markdown file, then farm it out to Qwen 3.6 27B on my DGX Spark-alike using Pi. Works amusingly well all things considered.

2ndorderthought•1h ago

How is glm 5.1? I have t tried it yet but have been meaning too

girvo•17m ago

It's surprisingly good. Beats MiniMax 2.7 and Qwen 3.5 Plus in my testing (I haven't tested 3.6 plus though), quite handily. It's far better than Sonnet, and often equivalent to Opus for the web development and OCaml tasks I'm using it for. It definitely isn't Opus 4.7, but its far good enough to earn it's keep and is substantially cheaper.

aftbit•1h ago

What hardware are you using to power this?

girvo•18m ago

> DGX Spark-alike

Probably wasn't clear enough if you don't know what that is already, apologies

It's an Asus Ascent GX10, which is a little mini PC with 128GB of LPDDR5X as shared memory for an Nvidia GB10 "Blackwell" (kind of, it's a long story) GPU and a MediaTek ARM CPU

aftbit•6m ago

Ah yeah I saw that, I was just curious which particular mini-PC you were using. I was considering picking up one of the various AI Max 395 boxes before the RAMpocalypse but didn't take the plunge. Thanks for the response!

chrsw•44m ago

I keep re-learning this lesson: I chug along with a lesser model then throw a problem at it that's too complex. Then I try different models until I give up and bring in Opus 4.6 to clean up.

brianwawok•41m ago

And I keep using Opus to like, make git commits. Really just need a smart router that is actually smart, vs having to micromanage model

willio58•19m ago

I don’t find this with sonnet at all. As long as I have a solid Claude.md and periodically review the output and enforce good code practices via basic CI gates I’ve rarely ever found myself having to switch to opus

2ndorderthought•1h ago

Oh shoot now the next CC upgrade will blow your subscription for doing this

alexdns•1h ago

obviously vibe coded ( co authored ) + the prices dont even match

2ndorderthought•1h ago

It's going to be real hard to find headlines that weren't vibe coded from here on out unfortunately.

cyanydeez•1h ago

welp, pack it it in boys, it was nice conceptualizing all you as real humans on the internet. I guess I'll just have to go touch grass if I want to feel parasocial.

dragontamer•54m ago

I mean, we have the tech and community to actually build in person meetups and sign CRT certificates, right?

If we touch grass in person and swap certificate requests, we can actually rebuild a trust network.

This is a pretty old problem with regards to clubs / secret societies and whatnot. And with certificates / PKI, our modern security tools have solved all the technical problems.

2ndorderthought•42m ago

I wish I could be invited to a secret club of guaranteed humans. Someone hand me a certificate next time you see me! Also don't stab me kthxbye

cyanydeez•39m ago

Unfortunately, a lot of whats happening in the tech world seems to be from some super serious AI cults, so not sure goin offline like this is any better.

2ndorderthought•14m ago

Yea but we could have fun. Play some dnd. Drink tea or whiskey. Eat pizza pie. Light saber battle. Buy a megaphone and hang out at a street corner telling passerbys they are perfectly acceptable and worthy of kindness and love

SchemaLoad•1h ago

Unless I actually know the author I assume everything here is vibeslop and full of mistakes.

Maybe I need to switch to some news publication that actually does real research and writing still. Because public forums like this have been completely destroyed by LLMs.

inciampati•1m ago

poorly vibe coded. machines can check details easily, use them.

vitaflo•1h ago

I'm not exactly sure what the point of this is. Deepseek already has instructions to use its API with many CLI's including Claude Code directly:

https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/agent_integrations...

2ndorderthought•1h ago

There probably isn't a point. Someone didn't understand something, didn't research it, so they 1 shotted their first thought and sent it to the front page of HN and all of their socials. It's the future bruh

ttoinou•1h ago

I thought the tool format wasnt exactly the same ? So plugging any IA into claude code requires a conversion of format

ricardobeat•1h ago

Many of them expose “anthropic-compatible” APIs for this very purpose.

crooked-v•38m ago

I'm curious how well it actually works. I tried Deepseek with Hermes and Opencode and it seemed extremely bad about using some of the basic tools given, like the Hermes holographic memory tools, even with system prompt instructions strongly pointing them out.

croes•32m ago

From vibe coders for vibe coders

aftbit•1h ago

    #!/bin/sh
    export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://api.deepseek.com/anthropic
    export ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN=sk-secret
    export ANTHROPIC_MODEL=deepseek-v4-flash
    export CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC=1
    exec claude $@

nadermx•1h ago

The AI wars have begun

aaurelions•54m ago

It seems like any project that makes fun of Claude is bound to reach the top spot on Hacker News. Even if it’s just a project consisting of four lines of code.

morpheos137•1h ago

anthropic messed up big time harness works with any muh commodity LLM, meanwhile VCs were duped on the myth of FOOM AGI, probably not a cooincidence Anthropic is enmeshed with the scifi fan fic forum known as lesswrong. The world wants useful tools. The bay area bubble in contrast thrives on Mythos.

hgyyy•22m ago

I think OAI and Anthropic will be ok for a year or two. But after that If they still continue to earn revenues from selling tokens to firms/software engineers they will be in serious trouble.

The American firms are not demonstrating escape velocity and as long as china offers something somewhat comparable and offers it at a very low price to compensate for any difference in quality, they will not be generating enough in cash flows to finance reinvestment. I highly doubt they’ll be able to continue raising external financing for numerous periods from here on out - they gotta start showing strong financials and that they are running away from the open source models.

justech•59m ago

If you're looking for Claude Code alternatives, I would first suggest looking into pi.dev or opencode for your harness. And then for models, you can choose from OpenCode Go (IMO most cost effect at this moment), OpenRouter, or direct from DeepSeek. Better if you go the Kimi route IMO and just buy a subscription from kimi.com

aaurelions•51m ago

Another very cost-effective option is Ollama Cloud. In a month of use, I only hit the 5-hour limit once, when I ran 8 agents simultaneously for 2 hours.

postatic•32m ago

definitely worth it - have both ollama cloud, opencode and hermes running to test them all out, working great so far.

Aeroi•41m ago

agreed. OpenCode is a strong base, and with a couple modifications it can become a very effective harness. my sideproject mouse.dev I’ve been combining parts from OpenCode, Claude Code, and Hermes to build a cloud agent architecture that works well from mobile.

CharlesW•11m ago

> OpenCode is a strong base, and with a couple modifications it can become a very effective harness.

I personally didn't find it to be competitve with Claude Code as a harness. Can I ask how you modified it to perform better?

wolttam•24m ago

I’m going to throw my harness in the ring: https://codeberg.org/mlow/lmcli

bakugo•10m ago

> I would first suggest looking into pi.dev

Looked into this one. Thought it was suspicious that it only had 7 open issues on github. Turns out they have a bot that auto-closes every single issue just because.

I honestly have no words.

Lihh27•40m ago

the wrapper is basically env var glue. You’re still betting the whole loop on Anthropic's closed client.

game_the0ry•36m ago

Cost engineering [1] will be the next hot topic for AI.

[1] A fancier way of saying "reducing cost."

deadbabe•16m ago

I had a call with our CTO and we are pivoting away from Claude Code to DeepClaude because the cost savings are too substantial to ignore.

vagab0nd•7m ago

This has become a problem for me. I like trying new things. But I also know that in about a week, there's going to be a better/cheaper setup. And a week after that. And ideally I'd like to get some coding done when I'm not tinkering with the tools.

So I think I'll stay with CC for now.

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DeepClaude – Claude Code agent loop with DeepSeek V4 Pro, 17x cheaper

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