DeepSeek Locally on Your Computer — Private and Without Limits
How to run DeepSeek on your own computer and work with it locally — no data sent to outside servers, no limits, no subscription. With access to files and the terminal through an agent.
DeepSeek quickly became one of the default models — strong and open. But using it through the website means every request goes to someone else's servers, and not everyone is comfortable sending work files there. The good news: DeepSeek can run entirely on your own computer.
Why run it locally
A local model removes several concerns at once. Data doesn't go anywhere — no files, no code, no conversations. No limits on the number of requests and no subscription. And it all works offline once the model is downloaded.
For work and confidential tasks, that settles the main worry: you can use DeepSeek's capability without wondering where whatever you fed it ends up.
How much memory you need
DeepSeek comes in different sizes, and that determines whether your machine can handle it. The model runs in RAM, so that's the main thing to look at: the smaller versions need 8–16 GB, the larger ones considerably more. Start with a smaller version — on a lot of tasks the difference is smaller than it seems, and it runs more reliably.
How to do this in Doka
Doka is a desktop agent, and DeepSeek connects to it two ways.
First, load a DeepSeek .gguf file through the model manager. Second, if you already
have Ollama or LM Studio running DeepSeek, connect them to Doka over API in the
"Models" tab. Either way, the model stays on your machine.
If you'd rather not bother picking a file, Doka has built-in models that install automatically on first launch. You can connect DeepSeek separately whenever you want that specific model.
The model is only part of it
There's a subtlety people often miss. DeepSeek by itself, run in a terminal, just answers in text. For it to actually work — reading your files, editing code, running commands — it needs an agent around it. Doka is what gives DeepSeek that access to your working environment.
What you get isn't "a local chat with DeepSeek" but a local executor built on it.
What's next
Installing Doka and connecting DeepSeek takes about ten minutes. If you haven't run a local model before at all, take a look first at how to run a local AI model with no command line — it covers the simplest starting point. Download Doka for free.
If you're choosing between a few open model families, see the comparison of DeepSeek and Qwen for local use: what matters there isn't the model name, but size, quantization, and your computer's memory.