Claude orchestrates. Vibe does the heavy lifting. You review the diff, save tokens, costs and avoid hitting limits!

Claude sees only ~500–1500 tokens per run regardless of how many file reads Vibe performs internally — massive savings on exploratory and implementation tasks.

Note that Vibe works natively with Mistral models which are capable and significantly cheaper than Claude, but Vibe can also be configured to use any other provider/model instead. Eg you can use a deepseek model with vibe tooling.

Summary:

1. User types /vibe <instruction> in Claude Code
2. Claude decomposes the task and writes a prompt
3. vibe-delegate runs Mistral Vibe in a pseudo-TTY
4. The delegate reports tool calls, token counts, and git diff --stat
5. Claude reviews the diff and summarizes the result

Cost savings — Vibe's file reads and edits consume cheap delegate tokens (or whatever model you configure), not Claude tokens:

Costs based on official pricing (May 2026): Claude $3/$15 per M tokens, Mistral Medium 3.5 $1.50/$7.50, DeepSeek V4 Flash $0.14/$0.28. Assumes ~85% input / 15% output, typical for coding tasks. Claude orchestration overhead: ~500 tokens per run (negligible).

Le Chat Pro users: Mistral Vibe is included in the Le Chat Pro subscription ($14.99/mo). Mistral does not publicly document the exact usage limits, but within the included allowance every delegation costs $0 in API fees — cheaper than any paid model.

Context window protection — On long coding sessions, every file read, function body, and debug loop burns Claude's context. Delegating to Vibe keeps that budget free. Claude enters the task, hands off, and comes back only to review the result — no context bleed from Vibe's internal turns.

Built-in quality gate — Claude doesn't just fire and forget. After each Vibe run, Claude reads the git diff, checks for syntax errors, and summarizes what changed before reporting back to you. You get a second pair of eyes on every delegation without lifting a finger.

• Mistral Vibe CLI installed and authenticated (vibe --version)
• Claude Code with skills enabled
• script command available (GNU/Linux or BSD/macOS variant)
• timeout command available; on macOS install GNU coreutils for gtimeout (or ensure your chosen timeout fallback is set up)
• python3 and optionally node for syntax checks
• A git repository to work in

git clone https://github.com/pcx-wave/vibe-skill.git && cd vibe-skill && mkdir -p ~/tools ~/.claude/skills/vibe ~/.claude/skills/vibeon ~/.claude/skills/vibeoff ~/.claude/skills/vibestatus ~/.claude/skills/vibe-model-pick ~/.claude/skills/vibe-model-clear && ln -sf "$(pwd)/tools/vibe-delegate" ~/tools/vibe-delegate && ln -sf "$(pwd)/tools/delegate-report" ~/tools/delegate-report && chmod +x ~/tools/vibe-delegate ~/tools/delegate-report && ln -sf "$(pwd)/SKILL.md" ~/.claude/skills/vibe/SKILL.md && ln -sf "$(pwd)/VIBEON.md" ~/.claude/skills/vibeon/SKILL.md && ln -sf "$(pwd)/VIBEOFF.md" ~/.claude/skills/vibeoff/SKILL.md && ln -sf "$(pwd)/VIBESTATUS.md" ~/.claude/skills/vibestatus/SKILL.md && ln -sf "$(pwd)/VIBE-MODEL-PICK.md" ~/.claude/skills/vibe-model-pick/SKILL.md && ln -sf "$(pwd)/VIBE-MODEL-CLEAR.md" ~/.claude/skills/vibe-model-clear/SKILL.md

# 1. Clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/pcx-wave/vibe-skill.git
cd vibe-skill

# 2. Install the scripts (symlinks — stay in sync with git pull)
mkdir -p ~/tools
ln -sf "$(pwd)/tools/vibe-delegate" ~/tools/vibe-delegate
ln -sf "$(pwd)/tools/delegate-report" ~/tools/delegate-report
chmod +x ~/tools/vibe-delegate ~/tools/delegate-report

# 3. Install the skills for Claude Code
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/vibe ~/.claude/skills/vibeon ~/.claude/skills/vibeoff ~/.claude/skills/vibestatus \
         ~/.claude/skills/vibe-model-pick ~/.claude/skills/vibe-model-clear
ln -sf "$(pwd)/SKILL.md" ~/.claude/skills/vibe/SKILL.md
ln -sf "$(pwd)/VIBEON.md" ~/.claude/skills/vibeon/SKILL.md
ln -sf "$(pwd)/VIBEOFF.md" ~/.claude/skills/vibeoff/SKILL.md
ln -sf "$(pwd)/VIBESTATUS.md" ~/.claude/skills/vibestatus/SKILL.md
ln -sf "$(pwd)/VIBE-MODEL-PICK.md" ~/.claude/skills/vibe-model-pick/SKILL.md
ln -sf "$(pwd)/VIBE-MODEL-CLEAR.md" ~/.claude/skills/vibe-model-clear/SKILL.md

# 4. (Optional) Enable auto-mode — Claude delegates all code tasks automatically
#    without requiring /vibe each time. Toggle with /vibeon and /vibeoff.
grep -q "vibe auto-mode" ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md 2>/dev/null || cat >> ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md << 'EOF'

# vibe auto-mode
At the start of every user request that involves writing, editing, or fixing code:
1. Run `test -f ~/.local/share/vibe-auto.flag` (silent, no output to user).
2. If the flag exists → automatically invoke the `vibe` skill exactly as if the user had typed `/vibe <their full instruction>`. Do NOT ask first, do NOT explain — just delegate.
3. If the flag is absent → proceed normally.

The flag is toggled by `/vibeon` and `/vibeoff`.
EOF

Verify with ~/tools/vibe-delegate /tmp "Say hello in one sentence." 3

Because both installs use symlinks, a git pull is all you need:

cd ~/vibe-skill && git pull

~/tools/vibe-delegate and ~/.claude/skills/vibe/SKILL.md are automatically up to date — no re-copy needed.

Migrating from a previous cp-based install? Replace the copies with symlinks:

cd ~/vibe-skill
ln -sf "$(pwd)/tools/vibe-delegate" ~/tools/vibe-delegate
ln -sf "$(pwd)/SKILL.md" ~/.claude/skills/vibe/SKILL.md

In a Claude Code session:

/vibe add a dark mode toggle to the settings page

/vibe the login form is not validating the email field — fix it

/vibe add pagination to the GET /posts route, 20 items per page

Claude decomposes the task, writes the Vibe prompt, supervises execution, and reports the diff.

By default, Vibe uses whatever active_model is set in ~/.vibe/config.toml. You can override it per-session without touching that file:

/vibe-model-pick              — interactive menu built from your config.toml models
/vibe-model-pick devstral-small  — switch directly by alias
/vibe-model-clear             — remove the override, return to config default
/vibestatus                   — shows both auto-mode state and active model override

The override is stored in ~/.local/share/vibe-model.flag and is picked up by vibe-delegate on every run. It persists across sessions until you clear it.

For frictionless delegation, enable auto-mode once in your Claude Code session:

/vibeon      — every code request is automatically delegated to Vibe, no /vibe prefix needed
/vibeoff     — return to normal Claude behaviour
/vibestatus  — auto-mode state + active model override

With vibeon active, just talk to Claude normally:

add pagination to the /posts route
fix the broken email validation
refactor the auth middleware into its own module

Claude intercepts any request that involves writing, editing, or fixing code and delegates it to Vibe transparently. Pure questions and conversations still go directly to Claude — only code tasks are delegated.

Sample output from a real run:

=== VIBE START ===
Workdir : /path/to/project
Agent   : default
Model   : (config default)
Turns   : 10
Timeout : 180s
Prompt  : Stack: Python/Flask. File: app.py ...
===================
  [read]  app.py
  [tool]  file: app.py
  [tool]  search_replace [OK] ...
  [vibe]  Done. Converted date to datetime.date in fetch_data().
Tool calls: 5  |  warns: 0  |  sr_fails: 0
Model               : deepseek-flash
Delegate tokens (run): 4,800  (last turn: 4,600+200)  |  cost ~$0.0007
Claude Sonnet 4.6 eq: same tokens would cost ~$0.0168  (ratio x24.0)
=== VIBE DONE (exit: 0) ===
=== SYNTAX OK (1 file(s) checked) ===

=== UNCOMMITTED CHANGES ===
 app.py | 4 ++--
[log] → ~/.local/share/delegate-runs.jsonl  (4800 tokens, exit 0, 34.2s, saved ~$0.0161 vs Claude)

Claude Code
  └─ /vibe <instruction>
       └─ SKILL.md logic
            └─ ~/tools/vibe-delegate <workdir> <prompt> [turns] [agent] [timeout]
                 ├─ writes prompt to temp file (avoids shell injection with UTF-8/emoji)
                 ├─ generates a temp shell script for the vibe command
                 ├─ runs: script -q -c "<vibe-script>" /dev/null (Linux)
                 │        or script -q /dev/null "<vibe-script>" (macOS)
                 │         └─ allocates pseudo-TTY (required — vibe hangs without one)
                 ├─ pipes JSON streaming output through Python parser
                 │         └─ prints [read] / [write] / [WARN] / [vibe] lines
                 ├─ reads real token counts from Mistral session log
                 ├─ runs syntax checks on modified .py and .js files
                 ├─ prints git diff --stat
                 └─ appends JSON entry to ~/.local/share/delegate-runs.jsonl

The script ... /dev/null trick allocates a pseudo-TTY on both Linux and macOS; prompt via temp file avoids shell injection with UTF-8/emoji.

Shell vs Python split — vibe-delegate started as pure shell. Python is now embedded in four places where shell falls short:

delegate-report is fully Python: it aggregates, sorts, and formats tabular data across hundreds of log entries — the kind of work where shell pipelines become unmaintainable.

• examples/good-prompts.md — prompt patterns that reliably work
• examples/anti-patterns.md — what fails and why, with fixes

A parallel delegate using Gemini CLI is available at pcx-wave/gemini-skill. Same orchestration pattern, same run log format — different model and trade-offs.

Every run is logged to ~/.local/share/delegate-runs.jsonl with tokens, cost, model, and failure details. Query it with ~/tools/delegate-report [--since N] [--project NAME] [--fails] or from Claude Code: /vibe-report [args].

See docs/feedback-claude-sonnet.md for original feedback from Claude after hours of practice that drove the iterations on vibe-delegate — real bugs hit, root causes, and the fixes applied.

MIT