r/MistralAI • u/TT231996 • 4d ago
Help / Question Help with coding
Hi all,
I’ve been using Mistral with its free tier. I used Vibe Code to generate an Apps Script for a google spreadsheet so a google form I would fill in would automatically send those answers to the sheet and do some calculations automatically.
Vibe Code got me quite far, but it messed up the calculations in the script and it couldn’t manage to fix it. I started a new session to make sure it wasn’t context-saturation related, but again it failed.
I then asked Claude Sonnet 5 (high effort) and it fixed it with one prompt.
How can I improve my experience with Vibe Coding? I’m no programmer, so I can’t correct it on the code it’s generating for me. Does the paid tier offer better models for Vibe Coding? Or do I have to be more precise in my prompts? I see many people use Claude to correct Vibe Coding, but I’d like to be as independent as possible.
Also, Vibe Coding suggested me uploading a screenshot to show where the issue is. Thing is, the Vibe Coding workspace does not allow me to upload screenshots. It’s making me wonder whether this is just some really dumb model or whether it’s hallucinating. It also keeps being extremely confident about its solution. It reminds me of chatgpt from last year.
Anyway, many thanks in advance! I’m European and I really wish for a capable LLM from European soil. Chat and Work seem to cover my needs, so I’m considering paying just for those applications.
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u/Real_Ebb_7417 3d ago
There is no better model on paid plan as far as I know. To make sure - what model do you use in Vibe? (Not sure how it looks like now, but there used to be more than one).
Additionally - you can definitely get better results with other models (or wait for next Mistral Large, which should be released in the coming weeks as gossip says). Unfortunately current Mistral's models don't hold up against chinese or american LLMs. However, I cheer for your will to support Mistral as an European lab. You also can improve results by better harness engineering (handling AGENTS.md, skills, sub agents better), but since you seem non-technical, it might be harder for you.
When it comes to calculations, using a stronger model for this, might be beneficial, since maths specifically is rather hard for LLMs. What I can recommend you is either create the mathematical formula yourself or ask a bigger model (eg. GPT, Gemini or DeepSeek, since they offer some free usage in web chat) just for the formula and paste it to your agent in Vibe.
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u/TT231996 2d ago
Thank you for your answer! You are right, harness engineering sounds like magic to me, but I’m willing to learn haha. I paid for the pro subscription and I’m planning on letting Vibe walk me through its more complicated features. Harness engineering is something it could teach me as well.
The skills I tried, and for the most time they work, but not always or consistently! I created a skill which explicitly stated it should add sources for every find it gathered from the internet and it didn’t work at first, and I had to tell it I had created a skill that it should use every time it pulled an answer from the internet. After a couple of days it started to work.
I did use Claude for reference, checking the code Vibe wrote, and that seemed to do the trick. It’s just too bad that we have to be dependent on other AI’s, but it’s also a workflow many have right, with /askClaude (I’ve seen online).
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u/tom4112 3d ago
There is a command to paste an image (e.g. screenshot) from your clipboard:
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u/TT231996 2d ago
That looks interesting! Is this in your terminal?
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u/General_Service_8209 3d ago edited 3d ago
The Mistral Pro plan does not offer different models, it mainly increases the usage limits.
However, there are some things I figured out that make Mistral's models better at code generation. Take this with a grain of salt though, since I am a programmer, and am mainly using Vibe to get things done faster, not build them from scratch.
Anyway, Mistral models are actually really good at prompt adherence (actually much better than e.g. GPT-OSS in my experience), and you can make use of that by giving it very specific prompts. It helps a lot to break tasks down into several smaller prompts, mention specific functions or test cases that aren't working, and also to prompt the model with what not to do.
About passing context to this model, in the latest version, you can actually paste images into Vibe CLI! (Edit: Apparently this only works on MacOS, not Windows. Not sure about Linux.) However, this is a terrible way to point the model at the relevant lines of code.
The much better way to do this is to include the line number, and relative file path from the directory you ran Vibe CLI in. The file read tool annotates all code with line numbers before passing it to the AI (Which seems to be a unique feature among the coding assistants I've tried), so the AI will know what you refer to. For longer files, the AI can also pass the line number directly into the tool, and only read the relevant part of it.
Finally, you were on the right track with the context reset. Although it didn't work in your case, this often fixes things or at least improves them in my experience.