Mistral

Use Mistral AI models with Docker Agent.

Overview

Mistral AI provides powerful language models through an OpenAI-compatible API. Docker Agent includes built-in support for Mistral as an alias provider.

Setup

1. Get an API key from Mistral Console

2. Set the environment variable:

   export MISTRAL_API_KEY=your-api-key
   

Usage

Inline Syntax

The simplest way to use Mistral:

agents:
  root:
    model: mistral/mistral-large-latest
    description: Assistant using Mistral
    instruction: You are a helpful assistant.

Named Model

For more control over parameters:

models:
  mistral:
    provider: mistral
    model: mistral-large-latest
    temperature: 0.7
    max_tokens: 8192

agents:
  root:
    model: mistral
    description: Assistant using Mistral
    instruction: You are a helpful assistant.

Available Models

Check the Mistral Models documentation for the latest available models.

Auto-Detection

When you run docker agent run without specifying a config and no project-level docker-agent.yaml, docker-agent.yml, or docker-agent.hcl exists, Docker Agent automatically detects available providers. If MISTRAL_API_KEY is set and higher-priority providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) are not available, Mistral will be used with mistral-small-latest as the default model.

Extended Thinking

Docker Agent's thinking_budget field is not applied to Mistral models: the underlying OpenAI-compatible client only sends reasoning_effort for OpenAI reasoning model names (o-series, gpt-5). Setting thinking_budget on a Mistral model passes config validation but has no effect on the request.

Mistral reasoning models (e.g. magistral) reason on their own without configuration. For non-reasoning models, use the think tool instead.

How It Works

Mistral is implemented as a built-in alias in Docker Agent:

• API Type: OpenAI-compatible (openai_chatcompletions)
• Base URL: https://api.mistral.ai/v1
• Token Variable: MISTRAL_API_KEY

This means Mistral uses the same client as OpenAI, making it fully compatible with all OpenAI features supported by Docker Agent.

Example: Code Assistant

agents:
  coder:
    model: mistral/codestral-latest
    description: Expert code assistant
    instruction: |
      You are an expert programmer using Codestral.
      Write clean, efficient, well-documented code.
      Explain your reasoning when helpful.
    toolsets:
      - type: filesystem
      - type: shell
      - type: think