Mistral 7B
Tested as the agent, because French projects often ask for a Mistral model. Few Mistral models fit a personal computer. Mistral Small 4 is a mixture of experts with 119 billion parameters, Mistral Medium and Large are larger, and the only open weights that fit are Mistral 7B, last updated in 2024.
Like the other agents in this section, it was compared with the recommended
model, Qwen3 4B Instruct, using ollama-agent.ts: the same four
turns, the same prompt with the automatic prompts on, the same machine, and
each model loaded before its run. The runs were done in French and in English.
| Turn | Mistral 7B v0.3 | Qwen3 4B, recommended |
|---|---|---|
| A greeting | First token after 0.1 to 0.3 s, 3 to 7 s of text | First token after ~145 ms, a short answer |
Asking the time, with a get_time tool | No call, an invented time, ~3 s to the first token | Tool called, the real time, 1.1 to 1.3 s |
A meaningless "euh" or "uh" | Answered every time | Skipped 3 times out of 4 |
"Merci, au revoir !" | Thanked the user for “the instructions” | Said goodbye without ending the call |
Ollama lists tools among the capabilities of this model, but it never
produced a valid tool call with the long system prompt Micdrop builds. It made
up the time instead, 13 h 15 when it was almost midnight. It also treats the
automatic prompts as user messages, so it answers a goodbye by thanking the
user for “the detailed instructions”.
After the greeting, every turn takes about 3 seconds to start, which is already the time budget of a whole spoken turn. Use Qwen3 4B Instruct, or the Mistral API if you need a Mistral model.