Mistral Vibe + GLM-5.2 Setup

Mistral Vibe + GLM-5.2 Setup#

How to run Z.ai GLM-5.2 — the open-weights model Mistral has hosted on La Plateforme since 2026-08-11 — as the coding agent in Mistral Vibe, both in the CLI and the VS Code extension.

Vibe is the agent formerly called Le Chat; its coding surface (vibe for code) ships as a CLI and a VS Code extension. GLM-5.2 is not a Mistral model — it is a third-party open model running on Mistral’s infrastructure, under the same regional controls and service commitments as Mistral’s own models.

Why this page lives here. The Kataglyphis repos are worked on by AI coding agents. This is the setup guide for one of them, so any contributor (human or agent) can reproduce the working config without reverse-engineering it from a log file. The errors and fixes in the troubleshooting table were all found live on 2026-08-28 — including two that produce no log entry, only garbled TUI output.

Prerequisites#

Need

Where

Mistral Vibe CLI

curl -LsSf https://mistral.ai/vibe/install.sh | bash or uv tool install mistral-vibe; on a native riscv64 host bash linux/host-config/install-mistral-vibe-riscv64.sh (linux-host-setup.md § D4)

Mistral account + API key

console.mistral.ai/api-keys (La Plateforme / Mistral Studio)

VS Code ≥ 1.94.0

only if you want the IDE panel — the CLI works standalone

Verify the CLI is on PATH after install:

vibe --version

1. Get a Mistral API key#

  1. Sign in at console.mistral.ai.

  2. Go to API Keys and create a new key.

  3. Copy it immediately — it is shown once.

A real Mistral key is roughly 32 alphanumeric characters. If what you have is shorter or reads like a placeholder (DEIN…, your-key-here), it is not a real key and every request will fail with HTTP 401.

2. Write ~/.vibe/config.toml#

Vibe stores its config in ~/.vibe/config.toml (Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.vibe\config.toml). The block below is the known-good config for GLM-5.2 on the EU endpoint:

active_model = "zai-glm-5-2"

[[providers]]
name = "mistral-eu"
api_base = "https://api.eu.mistral.ai/v1"
api_key_env_var = "MISTRAL_API_KEY"
api_style = "openai"
backend = "mistral"

[[models]]
name = "zai-glm-5-2"
provider = "mistral-eu"
alias = "zai-glm-5-2"
display_name = "Z.ai GLM 5.2"
temperature = 1.0
thinking = "off"
supports_images = false
input_price = 1.4
output_price = 4.4
cached_input_price = 0.14
auto_compact_threshold = 800000

Field reference#

Field

Value

Why

name

zai-glm-5-2

The exact model ID the Mistral API expects. Not glm-5.2, not glm5.2, not glm-5-2 — those all return Invalid model.

provider

mistral-eu

Matches the [[providers]] block below. Use mistral-eu for the EU endpoint, or point api_base at https://api.mistral.ai/v1 for the US endpoint.

backend

"mistral"

Uses the official Mistral SDK backend, which maps Vibe thinking levels to the API’s reasoning_effort parameter. The "generic" backend sends the raw level string ("max") which the Mistral API rejects — it only accepts "none" or "high". The default Mistral provider in Vibe ships with backend = "mistral".

alias

zai-glm-5-2

What shows in the model picker. Keep it identical to name to avoid /model confusion.

display_name

Z.ai GLM 5.2

Human-readable label in the picker. Optional but useful when multiple models are configured.

thinking

"off"

GLM-5.2’s model card lists no reasoning mode. Setting any non-"off" value makes the backend send a reasoning_effort parameter the model does not support, producing garbled output in the TUI.

supports_images

false

GLM-5.2 is text-only.

input_price

1.4

Cost per million input tokens (USD). Lets Vibe track session cost. From the model card.

output_price

4.4

Cost per million output tokens (USD).

cached_input_price

0.14

Cost per million cached input tokens (USD).

auto_compact_threshold

800000

The model has a 1M-token context window. Compact at 800K to leave headroom.

active_model

zai-glm-5-2

Must not be empty — an empty active_model means Vibe starts with no model selected.

3. Set the API key#

The key is not stored in config.toml. Vibe reads it from the environment variable named by api_key_env_var (here MISTRAL_API_KEY). The easiest way to set it persistently is the built-in setup flow:

vibe --setup

This opens a terminal prompt; paste the key from step 1. Vibe writes it to ~/.vibe/.env and future sessions pick it up automatically.

To verify the key is loaded without starting an interactive session:

# quick smoke test — model replies and exits
vibe -p "Reply with: OK" --max-turns 1 --auto-approve --output text

4. VS Code extension (optional)#

The Mistral Vibe VS Code extension (mistralai.mistral-vibe-code, on the Marketplace) runs the same bundled agent as the CLI. It reads the same ~/.vibe/config.toml and ~/.vibe/.env, so once the CLI is configured the extension picks up GLM-5.2 with no extra setup.

To install from inside VS Code:

  1. Ctrl+Shift+X to open Extensions.

  2. Search Mistral Vibe.

  3. Install the one published by Mistral AI (mistralai).

  4. Open the Vibe panel from the activity bar, or run Mistral Vibe: Open Mistral Vibe from the Command Palette.

If the extension needs credentials and none are configured yet, it opens a terminal setup flow that runs vibe --setup — step 3 above.

Troubleshooting#

Every row below was hit live on 2026-08-28. The log is at ~/.vibe/logs/vibe.log.

Symptom (log message)

Cause

Fix

Invalid model: glm-5.2 / Model 'glm-5.2' is not available on mistral

Wrong model ID in config.toml — the API rejects anything that is not exactly zai-glm-5-2.

Set name = "zai-glm-5-2" (and alias to match).

Invalid API key. Please check your API key and try again. (on every model, including mistral-medium-3.5)

~/.vibe/.env contains a placeholder or stale key, or MISTRAL_API_KEY is unset.

Run vibe --setup and paste a real key from console.mistral.ai/api-keys.

HTTP 401 at startup (Admin-managed config not applied / Connector catalog is unavailable)

Same root cause — the bad key fails before any model call.

Same fix — set the key. These warnings clear once auth works.

Garbled / strange output in the TUI (no log entry; the model answers but the display is wrong)

backend = "generic" sends reasoning_effort: "max" raw — the Mistral API only accepts "none" or "high". The "mistral" backend maps levels correctly ("max" → "high"), but GLM-5.2 has no reasoning support so the parameter should not be sent at all.

Set backend = "mistral" and thinking = "off". With thinking off, no reasoning_effort is sent regardless of backend.

Startup warning about thinking / reasoning mode

thinking = "max" set for a model whose card lists no reasoning mode.

Set thinking = "off". Vibe’s own migration code does the same for devstral-small-latest ("Force thinking='off'; it has no reasoning support").

No model selected on startup; /model shows nothing active

active_model = "" in config.toml.

Set active_model = "zai-glm-5-2".

Model not in the picker at all

[[models]] block missing or provider does not match any [[providers]] name.

Ensure provider = "mistral-eu" matches the provider block, and the model block is a top-level [[models]] table.

Quick health check#

# 1. is the CLI installed?
vibe --version

# 2. is the key set in this shell? (prints its length only, never the key;
#    0 is fine when vibe --setup stored it in ~/.vibe/.env instead)
echo "${#MISTRAL_API_KEY}"

# 3. does the model answer?
vibe -p "Reply with: OK" --max-turns 1 --auto-approve --output text

If step 3 prints OK, the full chain — key, endpoint, model ID — is correct.

References#