Bring DeepSeek V4-Pro and DeepSeek V4-Flash (1M context, selectable thinking effort) into GitHub Copilot Chat — with visible chain-of-thought, tool calling, and a live account-balance status bar.

Install the Extension from VSCode Marketplace or search DeepSeek Family for GitHub Copilot Chat in VSCode Extension Store.

What's new in 1.0.1 — fixed compatibility with the latest DeepSeek V4 API: the Thinking Effort selector now uses the official Low / High / Max values, and legacy None / medium / xhigh configs are mapped automatically so requests to deepseek-v4-pro and deepseek-v4-flash work again. See the changelog.

demo

This extension is modeled after glm-for-copilot and adapted for the DeepSeek OpenAI-compatible API. Huge shout out to @KiwiGaze for his foundamental work and generous licensing.

Highlights

🧠 Selectable thinking effort — every model exposes a Low / High / Max selector in the Copilot Chat model picker. DeepSeek's reasoning_content is forwarded to VS Code's thinking UI.
🚀 Two flagship models — deepseek-v4-pro (1.6T MoE, 49B active) and deepseek-v4-flash (284B MoE, 13B active). Both ship a 1M context window and 384K max output.
🛠️ Full Copilot Chat integration — tool calling, multi-turn reasoning preservation (passes reasoning_content back across tool-call turns to avoid the 400), and proper tool_choice handling.
🔐 Bring-your-own-key — your key lives in VS Code's SecretStorage (the OS keychain). Never written to settings.json or Git.
💰 Live account balance — a status-bar item polls GET /user/balance and surfaces your remaining credit; turns red when is_available: false.
🌐 Single endpoint — DeepSeek exposes one global base URL (https://api.deepseek.com); no region/apiMode gymnastics needed.

Quick start

Install the extension.
Create a key at https://platform.deepseek.com/api_keys.
Run DeepSeek: Set API Key from the Command Palette and paste the key.
Open Copilot Chat, click the model picker, and pick DeepSeek V4-Pro or DeepSeek V4-Flash.
(Optional) Use the per-model Thinking Effort selector to choose Low, High, or Max.

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
`deepseek-copilot.baseUrl`	`""`	Override the DeepSeek API base URL (empty = official endpoint).
`deepseek-copilot.maxTokens`	`0`	Max output tokens per request (`0` = API default).
`deepseek-copilot.maxRetries`	`3`	Auto retries on HTTP 429 / 5xx (exponential backoff + `Retry-After`).
`deepseek-copilot.modelIdOverrides`	`{}`	Remap picker model ids to API model ids.
`deepseek-copilot.customModels`	`[]`	Add your own model entries to the picker.
`deepseek-copilot.debugLogging`	`false`	Verbose logs to the DeepSeek output channel.
`deepseek-copilot.showUsageStatusBar`	`true`	Show the balance status bar.
`deepseek-copilot.usageRefreshIntervalMinutes`	`5`	Refresh interval for the balance status bar (1–1440).

Commands

Command	Description
`DeepSeek: Set API Key`	Save your DeepSeek key to SecretStorage.
`DeepSeek: Get API Key`	Open platform.deepseek.com/api_keys.
`DeepSeek: Clear API Key`	Remove the stored key.
`DeepSeek: Open Settings`	Jump to the extension's settings.
`DeepSeek: Show Logs`	Reveal the DeepSeek output channel.
`DeepSeek: Refresh Usage`	Force-refresh the balance status bar.
`DeepSeek: Show Usage Details`	Open the balance detail webview.

How thinking effort works

Picker value	Wire body
Low	`thinking: { type: "enabled" }, reasoning_effort: "low"`
High	`thinking: { type: "enabled" }, reasoning_effort: "high"`
Max	`thinking: { type: "enabled" }, reasoning_effort: "max"`

DeepSeek's default is High. Picking Max is recommended for hard coding and agentic tasks (as Claude Code and OpenCode do automatically). To skip chain-of-thought entirely, set thinking: disabled (legacy None configs are still mapped for compatibility).

See docs/deepseek-api.md for the full API reference.

Development

pnpm install
pnpm run compile      # build to out/
pnpm run watch        # rebuild on save
pnpm run typecheck    # tsc --noEmit
pnpm run lint         # eslint
pnpm test             # vitest run
pnpm run package      # produce a .vsix in dist/

Press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host with the extension loaded.