Mistral Deterministic Local Development Loop

Overview

Make local iteration deterministic and free of accidental spend. Keep provider calls behind a narrow adapter, validate synthetic fixtures, and reserve live calls for a separately approved lane.

Prerequisites

• A package lock, test framework, and selected official client.
• A provider-adapter boundary and synthetic fixture policy.
• A secret manager for the optional live lane; never a checked-in .env value.

Current Contract

Official clients wrap a changing HTTP schema. Local tests should assert the application-owned adapter; a narrow live smoke detects drift without making every test network-dependent.

Authentication

Offline tests must not resolve MISTRAL_API_KEY. The live test is disabled by default, reads a protected secret only after its gate is enabled, and redacts transport metadata.