Use Deep Research

Updated November 2, 2026 — Le Chat is now Vibe. Since May 28, 2026, Le Chat is now Vibe (still at chat.mistral.ai): a single agent for work and code, with your conversations, settings, and subscriptions carried over. The legacy Le Chat experience remains accessible in Chat mode; in Work mode, agents are now skills (invoked with @), memories are the knowledge base, and deep search is the Deep Research skill. Plans are now Mistral Free, Pro, Team, and Enterprise. This lesson now uses the name Vibe; some menus described here may have changed name or location.

Launch your first deep research

Activating it takes a single action: before sending your message, open the Vibe mode selector and choose Deep Research instead of standard conversation or web search. The mode applies to the message you are about to send, not retroactively to the one you just wrote.

Once the mode is active, phrase your question as you naturally would. This is the critical step: the report you receive will be exactly as good as the question you ask, and a poor report is almost always the symptom of a query that is too vague.

Write a query that produces a good report

The first requirement is specificity. Compare “Tell me about AI in Europe” with “What are the main generative AI investments made by European companies in Q1 2026, and how do they position themselves against US players?”. The first formulation forces Vibe to guess what interests you, and it will guess poorly; the second defines a scope, a period, and a comparison angle, which allows it to construct relevant sub-questions.

The second requirement is context. Say why you are searching and for whom: “I’m preparing a presentation for the executive committee. Analyze the regulatory risks linked to the AI Act for our credit scoring activity.” The resulting report will not resemble the one triggered by the same question asked bluntly, because the level of detail and vocabulary adjust to the stated use case. Same logic for academic work: “I’m writing a university thesis on open source LLMs. Synthesize recent academic publications comparing the performance of open and proprietary models.”

You can also impose the output structure, which saves you manual reorganization. “Organize results by country, with investments, regulation, and key players for each” gives a report ready to be cut into cards. “Present arguments for first, then arguments against, and end with a recommendation” gives a decision document.

Read the report methodically

A Deep Research report generally follows the same architecture: an executive summary delivering the main conclusions in a few lines, thematic sections each addressing an aspect of your question, citations linked to key claims, and a conclusion that synthesizes the salient points and sometimes suggests avenues for further research.

The cited sources are clickable, and this is where the reliability of your work hinges. Adopt three reflexes. Systematically open the source of any numeric data you plan to reuse. Weigh the nature of the emitter: a report from a recognized institution and an anonymous blog post do not carry the same weight, even if they appear side by side in the report. Finally, check dates, because an excellent source that is three years old may be irrelevant in a fast-moving market.

Refine without starting from scratch

The first report is not a final destination. Vibe retains the context of the initial search, which allows you to dig into a specific point without relaunching the entire investigation: “Deepen the section on French regulation”, “Add numeric data on market shares”, “Compare these results with the situation in Asia”. The report enriches instead of being replaced.

This flexibility extends to other modes. An effective sequence is to launch deep research on your subject, switch back to standard conversation to ask clarification questions, then switch to Canvas to transform the report into a finalized document—this feature is covered in the next section of the course.

A few habits significantly improve results. Stick to one question per search: mixing two unrelated topics dilutes the exploration on both. Keep important reports by copying or exporting them; conversations may be archived, but prudence recommends an independent backup. Treat the result as a starting point: Deep Research saves you hours of reading, but your expertise remains indispensable to interpret and contextualize. And accept the tool’s rhythm—launch the search, go do something else, come back a few minutes later.

A real-world first trial

To lock this in, open Vibe, select Deep Research mode, and ask the following question: “What are the European alternatives to major US language models in 2026? Compare their performance, accessibility, and regulatory compliance.” Let the generation run to completion.

When the report displays, do not read it like an article: browse the sources and classify three you deem reliable and three you would want to verify before citing anything. Finish by asking Vibe to deepen a specific point in the report, to measure what iteration adds compared to a new search launched from scratch.

Key takeaways

• Select Deep Research mode before sending your message
• Formulate precise, contextualized questions for better results
• Systematically verify sources cited in the report
• Iterate on results to deepen specific aspects
• Combine Deep Research with Chat and Canvas for a complete workflow