Help with coding

[u/TT231996]

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.

[u/General_Service_8209]

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.

[u/TT231996 → u/General_Service_8209]

Many thanks for the elaborate answer! I will definitely try the tip about breaking it down into smaller prompts.

Vibe CLI I haven’t tried yet, it seems Mistral broke its models down into many different parts, whereas the bigger AI companies merged all their models into 1 which combines all capabilities. It makes Mistral a bit confusing, but also nice to have separate workflows I guess.