whatisgithub

What is deepsec?

vercel-labs/deepsec — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

6,135TypeScriptAudience · developerComplexity · 4/5LicenseSetup · moderate

In one sentence

An AI agent powered vulnerability scanner from Vercel Labs that runs in your own infrastructure to find hard-to-catch security issues in large codebases.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      AI agent scans code for bugs
      Runs in your own infrastructure
      Parallel scanning at scale
    Tech stack
      TypeScript
      Claude
      Codex
    Use cases
      Full codebase security scan
      Pull request diff review
      Distributed sandbox scanning
    Audience
      Security engineers
      DevOps teams

Code map

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filefunction / class

What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Run an AI powered vulnerability scan across a large existing codebase.

USE CASE 2

Scan only the files changed in a pull request to gate CI on security findings.

USE CASE 3

Distribute a large scan across cloud sandbox machines for faster results.

What is it built with?

TypeScriptNode.jsClaudeCodex

How does it compare?

vercel-labs/deepseccrynta/terax-aihuachao/vscode-restclient
Stars6,1356,2245,999
LanguageTypeScriptTypeScriptTypeScript
Setup difficultymoderateeasyeasy
Complexity4/52/52/5
Audiencedeveloperdeveloperdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 1h+

Needs an AI provider, a Claude or Codex subscription or a Vercel AI Gateway key, full scans can be costly.

Use freely, including commercially, as long as you keep copyright and license notices, includes a patent grant.

So what is it?

Deepsec is a security scanning tool built by Vercel Labs that uses AI coding agents to search a codebase for vulnerabilities that are hard to catch with traditional automated tools. Rather than relying only on fixed rule based checks, it uses powerful language models set to their highest reasoning settings to actually read and reason about the code, which the project openly states can cost thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars to scan a large codebase, though its makers say customers have found that cost worthwhile for catching bugs that would otherwise sit unnoticed for a long time. You run deepsec inside your own repository and your own infrastructure, so your code is not sent to a hosted scanning service beyond whichever AI provider you configure. For big codebases, the work is split up and run in parallel across multiple worker machines, and if a scan is interrupted partway through, rerunning the same command picks up where it stopped instead of starting over. The typical workflow has several stages: a fast pass using pattern based matchers to find candidate spots worth investigating, followed by an AI powered investigation step that produces actual findings with recommendations, an optional cheaper triage pass that sorts findings by severity, and a revalidation step that rechecks old findings against your project's git history to see if they have already been fixed. Results can be exported as markdown files or JSON for further use, and there is a special mode for scanning only the files changed in a pull request rather than the whole codebase. Deepsec needs access to an AI provider to work, either your own existing Claude or Codex subscription for smaller evaluation runs, or the Vercel AI Gateway for full scans that need more capacity. For very large projects it can also distribute the AI investigation work across cloud based sandbox virtual machines through a Vercel account. The project describes itself candidly as similar to a coding agent with full shell access on wherever it runs, and it documents the security tradeoffs of that design, including how sandboxed execution limits what a compromised dependency could actually reach. It is released under the Apache 2.0 license.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Help me run npx deepsec init and set up my first scan on this repo.
Prompt 2
Explain the difference between deepsec scan, process, triage, and revalidate.
Prompt 3
Help me configure the Vercel AI Gateway key for a full deepsec scan.
Prompt 4
Walk me through using deepsec process --diff for pull request security review.

Frequently asked questions

What is deepsec?

An AI agent powered vulnerability scanner from Vercel Labs that runs in your own infrastructure to find hard-to-catch security issues in large codebases.

What language is deepsec written in?

Mainly TypeScript. The stack also includes TypeScript, Node.js, Claude.

What license does deepsec use?

Use freely, including commercially, as long as you keep copyright and license notices, includes a patent grant.

How hard is deepsec to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 1h+ to a first successful run.

Who is deepsec for?

Mainly developer.

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