MistralAI-Index
Mistral AI •
Web Crawler
What is MistralAI-Index?
Mistral says MistralAI-Index automatically crawls the public web to index content for search used to answer questions in Vibe. Its documentation explicitly separates this activity from model training and from the user-initiated MistralAI-User fetcher already listed in this directory. Mistral publishes a full user-agent string and a dedicated IP list. A site can address this crawler separately in robots.txt.
User Agent String
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; MistralAI-Index/1.0; +https://docs.mistral.ai/robots)
How to Control MistralAI-Index
Block Completely
To prevent MistralAI-Index from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block MistralAI-Index
User-agent: MistralAI-Index
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: MistralAI-Index
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /public/
Set Crawl Delay
To slow down the crawl rate (note: not all bots respect this directive):
User-agent: MistralAI-Index
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify MistralAI-Index
Verification Method:
Compare the source IP with Mistral's published MistralAI-Index IP list; do not rely on the user-agent alone.
Compare the source IP with Mistral's published MistralAI-Index IP list; do not rely on the user-agent alone.
Learn more in the official documentation.
⚠️ AI Training Notice
This bot may collect and use your website content for AI model training. Consider whether you want your content used for this purpose before allowing access.
This bot may collect and use your website content for AI model training. Consider whether you want your content used for this purpose before allowing access.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect MistralAI-Index in your application:
Basic Pattern
/MistralAI\-Index/i
Strict Pattern
/^Mozilla\/5\.0 AppleWebKit\/537\.36 \(KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; MistralAI\-Index\/1\.0; \+https\:\/\/docs\.mistral\.ai\/robots\)$/
Flexible Pattern
/MistralAI\-Index[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/i
Vendor Match
/.*Mistral AI.*MistralAI\-Index/i
Implementation Examples
// PHP Detection for MistralAI-Index
function detect_mistralai_index() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/MistralAI\-Index/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('MistralAI-Index detected from IP: ' . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
// Set cache headers
header('Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600');
header('X-Robots-Tag: noarchive');
// Optional: Serve cached version
if (file_exists('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html')) {
readfile('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for MistralAI-Index
import re
from flask import request, make_response
def detect_mistralai_index():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'MistralAI\-Index'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False
# Django Middleware
class mistralai_indexMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for MistralAI-Index
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
// Middleware to detect MistralAI-Index
function detect_mistralai_index(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /MistralAI\-Index/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('MistralAI-Index detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'MistralAI-Index';
}
next();
}
app.use(detect_mistralai_index);
# Apache .htaccess rules for MistralAI-Index
# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} MistralAI\-Index [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} MistralAI\-Index [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]
# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "MistralAI\-Index" is_bot=1
# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /MistralAI\-Index/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for MistralAI-Index
# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_mistralai_index {
default 0;
~*MistralAI\-Index 1;
}
server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_mistralai_index) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_mistralai_index) {
root /var/www/cached;
try_files $uri $uri.html $uri/index.html @backend;
}
try_files $uri @backend;
}
# Add headers for bot requests
location @backend {
if ($is_mistralai_index) {
add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600";
add_header X-Robots-Tag "noarchive";
}
proxy_pass http://backend;
}
}
Should You Block This Bot?
Recommendations based on your website type:
| Site Type | Recommendation | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | Allow | Essential for product visibility in search results |
| Blog/News | Consider Blocking | Your content may be used for AI training without compensation |
| SaaS Application | Block | No benefit for application interfaces; preserve resources |
| Documentation | Allow | Improves documentation discoverability for developers |
| Corporate Site | Allow | Allow for public pages, block sensitive areas like intranets |
Advanced robots.txt Configurations
E-commerce Site Configuration
User-agent: MistralAI-Index
Crawl-delay: 5
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /*?sort=
Disallow: /*?filter=
Disallow: /*&page=
Allow: /products/
Allow: /categories/
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Publishing/Blog Configuration
User-agent: MistralAI-Index
# Blocking AI training bot
Disallow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: MistralAI-Index
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
MistralAI-Index
Robots.txt Name
MistralAI-Index
Category
ai, search
Respects robots.txt
Yes
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