Mistral releases Devstral2 and Mistral Vibe CLI

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

European positioning and military ties

  • Commenters are pleased Mistral remains European-owned and see it as strategic autonomy from US tech.
  • Others argue that given existing defense contracts (e.g. EU militaries, Helsing partnership), the company is already aligned with mil-tech and will deepen that if needed.
  • Some state the US has effectively “turned its back” on allies already, reinforcing the perceived need for EU AI champions.

“Vibe coding” name and philosophy

  • Many dislike the “Vibe CLI” name, finding it unserious for professional work.
  • Long subthread debates what “vibe coding” means:
    • One camp: no reviewing code, just prompting and testing outcomes.
    • Others use it more broadly for any LLM-assisted coding, even with review.
  • Several note that vendors (including other major labs) are explicitly marketing “vibe coding,” which some see as encouraging sloppy, unreviewed use.

Demand for serious, review-centric tools

  • Multiple users want tools that tightly integrate with IDEs, git, and diff/review workflows rather than chat-first “agents.”
  • Aider is frequently cited as closest to this ideal (watch mode, auto-commits, git integration), though some still find its chat paradigm limiting.
  • There’s interest in new UX paradigms: goal/milestone-based planning, better orchestration over branches, and clearer separation between AI and human edits.

Model quality, pricing, and capabilities

  • Devstral 2 is seen as competitive for coding, with some placing it between mid and top-tier proprietary models.
  • Early hands-on reports:
    • Good at understanding codebases, finding bugs, and making localized edits.
    • Strong in Python; more mixed feedback for React/JS.
    • Some complaints about slow or brittle edits and occasional syntax errors.
  • The announced token pricing is praised as very low; some argue pay-as-you-go now beats fixed “Pro” subscriptions. Others warn that weaker models may consume more tokens and time.

Licensing and “open source” debate

  • Devstral 2’s “modified MIT” license (barring companies over €20M/month revenue) sparks long argument.
  • One side: this is not “open source” or “permissive” in the standard OSI sense and misusing the term is dishonest and harmful.
  • The other side: restricting only megacorps is desirable, and diluting the term is acceptable or inevitable.
  • Several suggest Mistral should brand it under a custom “Mistral License” instead of “modified MIT.”

CLI, implementation, and ecosystem

  • The Vibe CLI being open source (Python, Textual, Pydantic) with ACP support is welcomed; people are already packaging it (Nix, AUR) and inspecting its prompts.
  • Some wish providers would contribute to existing tools (Roo, Opencode) rather than ship yet another proprietary CLI, but others argue vendors want tight optimization and ecosystem control.
  • Python performance concerns are raised, though others say streaming speed issues are tool-specific, not language-limited.

Playful benchmarks and evaluation

  • The familiar “SVG pelican riding a bicycle” test is used; Devstral 2 performs well, generating a coherent SVG scene.
  • Long side discussion on whether such whimsical tests correlate with general capability; several claim, based on experience, that they often do, despite being originally a joke.
  • Others question the value of non-realistic prompts versus practical “wine glass” style reasoning tests and worry about potential benchmark overfitting.

Local deployment and hardware

  • Many are interested in running Devstral Small 2 or the full 123B model locally.
  • Suggested setups range from MacBooks with large unified memory, to RTX 4090/5090, AMD 7900 XTX / AI Pro GPUs, multi-GPU 3090 rigs, and cloud rentals via llama.cpp.
  • Trade-offs discussed: dense vs sparse models, VRAM requirements, power costs, and whether renting GPUs is more economical than per-token APIs.

Subscriptions, UX, and ecosystem fit

  • Users miss a simple, consumer-friendly coding subscription comparable to other vendors; Mistral Code currently appears focused on enterprise/API.
  • Some plan to switch from competing coding tools to Vibe for “buy European” reasons, while others remain skeptical it can match top closed models for complex work.