Mistral Made Crystal Clear · chapter 2: The Mental Model: API, App, or Your Own Hardware
The three-path map, with billing unit, privacy default and support level marked on...
2026-09-18
Below: the paragraph from the book that builds this idea, then the diagram itself (Figure 2.1), and a recap. About a minute of reading.
Readers who skip this distinction are the ones who get surprised later: by a bill they did not expect, by a free-tier limit that changed with no announcement, or by a data-handling question they cannot actually answer because they never worked out which kitchen their conversation happened in. This chapter gives you the map so that every later chapter in this book, on pricing, on privacy, on licensing, slots into a structure you already understand.
Recap
- The idea: The three-path map, with billing unit, privacy default and support level marked on each branch.
- The picture: Figure 2.1, from chapter 2 ("The Mental Model: API, App, or Your Own Hardware") of Mistral Made Crystal Clear.
- Go deeper: the chapter builds this step by step, with recipes and sources at the end.
This diagram is one of many in Mistral Made Crystal Clear.
Every chapter opens with the gist, draws the hard ideas, and ends with recipes and sources.
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