Bot guide
MistralAI-User: what this Mistral crawler does.
Who runs it, what it does with your pages, how to spot it in your logs and how to allow or block it, from Mistral's own documentation.
Short answer
What is this Mistral crawler?
MistralAI-User is the Mistral crawler for user actions in Vibe. When a user asks Vibe a question, it may visit a page and link to it. Mistral says it is not used to crawl the web automatically or for model training.
In brief
Four things to know first.
A user-triggered fetch
This crawler visits a page when a user's question in Vibe calls for it, and can link to the source.
Not training, not auto-crawling
Mistral says it is not used to crawl the web automatically or to gather content for generative AI training.
Easy to recognise
A published user-agent string and a Mistral-published IP list let you check a request.
Two sibling crawlers
Mistral also runs MistralAI-Index for search indexing and MistralAI-Training for model datasets.
What it does
What the Mistral crawler does with your pages.
Mistral says it uses crawlers to run product tasks, automatically or when a user requests them. This bot is the second kind: it handles user actions in Vibe.
When a user asks Vibe a question, it may visit a web page to help answer and include a link to the source in its response.
| Does | Does not | |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | Visits a page when a user asks Vibe | Crawl the web in any automatic fashion |
| Output | Helps answer; can link the source | Crawl content for generative AI training |
Recognise it
Spot MistralAI-User in your logs.
Mistral publishes the full user-agent string, which names version 1.0 and points to its robots documentation. It also publishes a list of IP addresses for this crawler.
| Check | What Mistral publishes |
|---|---|
| User agent | Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; MistralAI-User/1.0; +https://docs.mistral.ai/robots) |
| IP addresses | [[Mistral's published JSON list of bot IPs]] |
Control it
Allow or block it in robots.txt.
Mistral says it uses robots.txt tags to help webmasters manage how their sites interact with AI. For this bot, its token governs which sites user requests can be made to.
Decide what you want
Allow it to let Vibe visit your pages for users. Block it to stop those user-triggered visits.Edit robots.txt
Start a group with the user-agent token Mistral documents for this bot. Then add Allow or Disallow lines for the paths you choose.Handle the other crawlers separately
Mistral lists MistralAI-Index and MistralAI-Training as separate user agents, so set each one on its own.Check your logs
Match requests to the published user agent and IP list to confirm your rules work.
Not sure which crawlers can read your site?
Our Technical GEO work checks crawler access, rendering and schema so the pages you want cited can be read.
Mistral's crawlers
Three crawlers, three purposes.
Blocking one does not set the others. MistralAI-Index has its own IP list; MistralAI-Training can be disallowed in robots.txt.
| Crawler | Purpose | Used for training? |
|---|---|---|
| Mistral's user-request crawler | User actions in Vibe | No |
| MistralAI-Index | Indexing for Mistral search | No |
| MistralAI-Training | Datasets for Mistral models | Yes |
Should you block it?
What blocking costs you.
This crawler is not used for training or automatic crawling. Blocking it mainly stops Vibe from fetching your pages when a user asks, so your pages may appear less often as linked sources.
Mistral publishes no figures on how often this happens, so weigh it against your goals.
Allow it
Vibe can fetch your pages for users and link to them as a source.
Block it
You stop those user-triggered visits and may lose linked citations.
Block training only
Disallow MistralAI-Training to keep content out of model datasets.
FAQ
MistralAI-User: common questions.
Is this crawler used to train Mistral models?
No. Mistral says this bot is not used for crawling the web in any automatic fashion, nor to crawl content for generative AI training. Training data comes from a separate crawler, MistralAI-Training.
How do I verify a request from this crawler?
Compare the request to Mistral's published details. Check that the user agent matches the exact string Mistral publishes for this bot. Then check that the source IP appears in Mistral's JSON IP file.
Does blocking this bot also block Mistral's other crawlers?
Blocking this bot does not block Mistral's other crawlers. Mistral documents MistralAI-Index for search indexing and MistralAI-Training for model datasets as separate user agents, so each needs its own robots.txt rule.
What does the Mistral crawler MistralAI-Index do?
MistralAI-Index automatically crawls the web for indexing only. Mistral says it indexes content for Mistral search, which helps answer user questions in Vibe, and that its content is not used for generative AI training of any kind.
Will this crawler link back to my page?
Mistral's Vibe assistant may link back to your page. According to Mistral, when a user asks Vibe a question, it may visit a web page to help answer and include a link to the source in its response.
Check what AI crawlers can read on your site.
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