What causes "Deepseek API error: {str(e)}" in Fosowl/agenticSeek?

Inspect the chained cause message for the precise HTTP status from Deepseek

Fosowl/agenticSeek · error · Exception

Deepseek API error: {str(e)}

Error message

Deepseek API error: {str(e)}

What it means

deepseek_fn wraps any failure from its chat.completions.create call into 'Deepseek API error: {str(e)}', re-raised with the original as __cause__. The OpenAI-compatible client against api.deepseek.com can fail on auth, bad model names, insufficient balance, rate limits, or network issues.

Source

Thrown at sources/llm_provider.py:347

    def deepseek_fn(self, history, verbose=False):
        """
        Use deepseek api to generate text.
        """
        client = OpenAI(api_key=self.api_key, base_url="https://api.deepseek.com")
        if self.is_local:
            raise Exception("Deepseek (API) is not available for local use. Change config.ini")
        try:
            response = client.chat.completions.create(
                model=self.model,
                messages=history,
                stream=False
            )
            thought = response.choices[0].message.content
            if verbose:
                print(thought)
            return thought
        except Exception as e:
            raise Exception(f"Deepseek API error: {str(e)}") from e

    def lm_studio_fn(self, history, verbose=False):
        """
        Use local lm-studio server to generate text.
        """
        if self.in_docker:
            # Extract scheme, host, and port from server_address
            port = "1234"  # default
            addr = self.server_address
            if "://" not in addr:
                addr = f"http://{addr}"
            parsed_addr = urlparse(addr)
            if parsed_addr.port:
                port = str(parsed_addr.port)
            hostname = parsed_addr.hostname or "localhost"
            scheme = parsed_addr.scheme or "http"
            # For localhost/127.0.0.1, redirect to Docker internal URL so containers
            # can reach the host machine; for all other hosts use the configured address

View on GitHub (pinned to ae57a23577)

Solutions

Inspect the chained cause message for the precise HTTP status from Deepseek
Verify api_key in config.ini is a valid Deepseek key with positive balance
Set self.model to a Deepseek-supported model ('deepseek-chat' or 'deepseek-reasoner')
Retry with backoff on 429/5xx; check Deepseek status page for incidents
Confirm outbound HTTPS to api.deepseek.com is allowed

Example fix

// before
result = provider.deepseek_fn(history)
// after
try:
    result = provider.deepseek_fn(history)
except Exception as e:
    logging.error(f"Deepseek failed: {e}")
    if "402" in str(e.__cause__):
        top_up_deepseek_balance()
    raise

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

def validate_deepseek(provider):
    assert provider.api_key and provider.api_key.startswith("sk-"), "Deepseek API key missing/placeholder"
    assert provider.model in ("deepseek-chat", "deepseek-reasoner"), f"'{provider.model}' is not a Deepseek API model"

Type guard

def is_deepseek_model(model: str) -> bool:
    return model in {"deepseek-chat", "deepseek-reasoner"}

Try / catch

try:
    thought = provider.deepseek_fn(history)
except Exception as e:
    cause = str(e.__cause__)
    if "402" in cause:
        raise RuntimeError("Deepseek balance exhausted — top up account") from e
    if "429" in cause:
        retry_with_backoff()
    else:
        raise

Prevention

Monitor Deepseek account balance; 402 is the top production failure
Only pass Deepseek-native model names to the deepseek provider
Log __cause__ so the real status code isn't lost
Alert on repeated failures — often account or quota issues, not code bugs

When it happens

Trigger: client.chat.completions.create raises: invalid api_key (401), unknown self.model for Deepseek, insufficient Deepseek account balance (402), 429 rate limit, timeouts/connection errors.

Common situations: Deepseek account out of credits; model set to a Together/OpenAI name not served by Deepseek; key left as placeholder; network blocked to api.deepseek.com.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of Fosowl/agenticSeek@ae57a23577 (2026-08-30). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f7ef5f2b0833e033. Report an issue: GitHub.