Mistral Vibe Development Environment

Code name: mistral-dev

Installs the Mistral Vibe IDE extension across supported editors so every devcontainer gets AI-assisted coding powered by Mistral out of the box. Credentials and configuration persist in a Docker named volume linked into the container — they survive all rebuilds, including --no-cache, and GitHub Codespaces.

Also included automatically: repairs broken host paths in your git config and restores your SSH commit-signing key on every attach, on both local and cloud containers, with nothing to set up on your end — see helpers4-common for how it works.

Example Usage

{
  "features": {
    "ghcr.io/helpers4/devcontainer/mistral-dev:1": {}
  }
}

No initializeCommand required — Docker creates the volume automatically the first time it’s needed.

With the optional CLI:

{
  "features": {
    "ghcr.io/helpers4/devcontainer/mistral-dev:1": {
      "installCli": true
    }
  }
}

GitHub Codespaces

Works out of the box. A host bind-mount would not: GitHub Codespaces doesn’t support mounting the local file system at all, so this feature uses a Docker named volume instead. Each codespace gets its own volume, populated on your first Vibe login there.

The volume name includes ${devcontainerId}, so it’s dedicated to this one devcontainer — credentials and config survive rebuilds of this project, but never bleed into another one. The trade-off: logging in again is needed once per devcontainer, not once per machine. Earlier versions keyed the volume by ${localEnv:USER} instead (one identity shared across every local project) — deliberately dropped, mirroring the same fix applied to claude-dev: sharing one AI tool identity across otherwise-unrelated projects risks config/permission settings from one project silently applying to another, for a convenience (skip re-login) that isn’t worth that trade-off.

Options

Option	Type	Default	Description
username	string	auto	Container user that receives the ~/.vibe symlink. auto detects vscode/node/codespace/uid-1000, in that order; set an explicit username to override.
installCli	boolean	false	Install the vibe CLI. Requires Python 3.12+ or uv in the container.

IDE support

Editor	Status	ID
VS Code	✅	mistralai.mistral-vibe-code
Cursor	✅	mistralai.mistral-vibe-code (same registry as VS Code)

How it works

Extension

The feature declares the mistralai.mistral-vibe-code extension via the customizations field in devcontainer-feature.json. The devcontainer runtime installs it automatically.

Credential persistence

1. Build time (install.sh): generates /usr/local/share/mistral-dev/setup-credentials.sh with the target user’s home path baked in.
2. Mount (devcontainer-feature.json → mounts): mounts the Docker named volume helpers4-mistral-credentials-${devcontainerId} at /mnt/h4vibe inside the container.
3. Every start (postStartCommand): setup-credentials.sh replaces ~/.vibe with a symlink to /mnt/h4vibe — credentials and config survive rebuilds.

This means:

• Credentials survive container rebuilds (including --no-cache) and Codespaces.
• First-time auth inside the container writes back to the volume automatically.
• VIBE_HOME is not required — the symlink is transparent to Mistral Vibe.

If /mnt/h4vibe is not mounted (e.g. a standalone install.sh test), the script warns and exits cleanly — the container starts normally, just without persistence.

CLI (optional)

When installCli: true, the vibe command is installed at build time via uv (preferred) or pip. See Mistral Vibe CLI docs.

OS and Architecture Support

• OS: Linux (Debian/Ubuntu-based images)
• Architectures: amd64, arm64

Version History

• v1.3.1: Documentation only, no functional change — centralized the exclusive-vs-shared volume rationale onto h4_ensure_volume_writable’s own comment in helpers4-common, trimming the near-identical explanation this file (and claude-dev/pnpm-store/playwright-dev) used to restate independently.
• v1.3.0: Breaking: the credentials volume is now keyed by ${devcontainerId} instead of ${localEnv:USER} — each devcontainer gets its own dedicated volume instead of sharing one across every local project. You’ll need to log in again once per devcontainer instead of once per machine. Mirrors the same fix applied to claude-dev — see “GitHub Codespaces” above. h4_ensure_volume_writable is now called without --shared, since an exclusive-per-container volume can never have a concurrent writer with a different UID.
• v1.2.4: Internal cleanup, no behavior change — dropped dead _BUILD_ARG_* fallbacks in install.sh (INSTALLCLI, USERNAME). That prefix is only ever set for the legacy internalVersion: "1" manifest shape, which this feature (and every other one in this repo) never declared — the fallback never fired, the plain option env var alone always resolved the same value.
• v1.2.3: Internal refactor, no behavior change — the shared-volume ownership logic (claim on first use, share via chmod afterward instead of stealing from another project’s container) now calls helpers4-common’s h4_ensure_volume_writable --shared instead of carrying its own inline copy.
• v1.2.2: Documentation only, no functional change — the previous wording sweep made the JSON description field far too long, shifting focus away from the feature itself onto the self-heal side benefit. Shortened to 5 words and kept generic (no implementation detail like “git config”), matching the original’s brevity and level of detail.
• v1.2.1: Documentation only, no functional change — the self-heal callout above (and the JSON description field) led with internal jargon (“helpers4’s self-heal”) instead of the actual benefit; reworded to lead with what it does, with the full mechanism staying in helpers4-common’s own README.
• v1.2.0: Documentation only, no functional change — mentions that helpers4-common’s automatic git-config self-heal (see above) now comes along with this feature.
• v1.1.0: Switched from an inline copy of helpers4-common’s bootstrap (user detection, apt helpers) to a direct dependsOn on the helpers4-common feature — no behavior change, just a single source of truth for that logic instead of a copy every feature had to keep in sync.
• v1.0.6: Fixed EACCES permission errors on a fresh container: the named volume introduced in v1.0.4 is created root-owned by Docker, and nothing chowned it to the container’s actual user before symlinking ~/.vibe into it. setup-credentials.sh now chowns the volume to the current user when needed, same pattern pnpm-store’s guard script already used.
• v1.0.5: A missing /mnt/h4vibe mount now warns and exits cleanly instead of erroring out — the container starts normally, just without persistence, matching claude-dev’s behavior for the structurally identical situation.
• v1.0.4: Switched credential persistence from a host bind-mount to a Docker named volume to fix GitHub Codespaces, which doesn’t support host bind-mounts at all (#66). If you’re upgrading from v1.0.3 or earlier, this is a breaking change: the new volume starts empty — your old host-bound ~/.vibe isn’t copied in automatically. Re-authenticate once after upgrading, or manually copy your old ~/.vibe content into the new volume (e.g. docker cp into a throwaway container mounting helpers4-mistral-credentials-${USER}) if you want to keep it.