vllm serve cyankiwi/Ministral-3-8B-Instruct-2512-AWQ-4bit --tokenizer_mode mistral --config_format mistral --load_format mistral --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser mistral

Additional Information

Changelog

v1.0.0 - Initial quantized release

Authors

Name: Ton Cao
Contacts: ton@cyan.kiwi

Ministral 3 8B Instruct 2512

A balanced model in the Ministral 3 family, Ministral 3 8B is a powerful, efficient tiny language model with vision capabilities.

This model is the instruct post-trained version in FP8, fine-tuned for instruction tasks, making it ideal for chat and instruction based use cases.

The Ministral 3 family is designed for edge deployment, capable of running on a wide range of hardware. Ministral 3 8B can even be deployed locally, capable of fitting in 12GB of VRAM in FP8, and less if further quantized.

Learn more in our blog post here.

Key Features

Ministral 3 8B consists of two main architectural components:

8.4B Language Model
0.4B Vision Encoder

The Ministral 3 8B Instruct model offers the following capabilities:

Vision: Enables the model to analyze images and provide insights based on visual content, in addition to text.
Multilingual: Supports dozens of languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic.
System Prompt: Maintains strong adherence and support for system prompts.
Agentic: Offers best-in-class agentic capabilities with native function calling and JSON outputting.
Edge-Optimized: Delivers best-in-class performance at a small scale, deployable anywhere.
Apache 2.0 License: Open-source license allowing usage and modification for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.
Large Context Window: Supports a 256k context window.

Use Cases

Perfect for balanced performance in local or embedded systems, combining versatility with efficiency.

Chat interfaces in constrained environments
Local daily-driver AI assistant
Image/document description and understanding
Translation and content generation
Specialized agentic use cases
Fine-tuning and specialization
And more...

Bringing advanced AI capabilities to resource-constrained environments.

Recommended Settings

We recommend deploying with the following best practices:

System Prompt: Define a clear environment and use case, including guidance on how to effectively leverage tools in agentic systems.
Sampling Parameters: Use a temperature below 0.1 for daily-driver and production environments ; Higher temperatures may be explored for creative use cases - developers are encouraged to experiment with alternative settings.
Tools: Keep the set of tools well-defined and limit their number to the minimum required for the use case - Avoiding overloading the model with an excessive number of tools.
Vision: When deploying with vision capabilities, we recommend maintaining an aspect ratio close to 1:1 (width-to-height) for images. Avoiding the use of overly thin or wide images - crop them as needed to ensure optimal performance.

Ministral 3 Family

Model Name	Type	Precision	Link
Ministral 3 3B Base 2512	Base pre-trained	BF16	Hugging Face
Ministral 3 3B Instruct 2512	Instruct post-trained	FP8	Hugging Face
Ministral 3 3B Reasoning 2512	Reasoning capable	BF16	Hugging Face
Ministral 3 8B Base 2512	Base pre-trained	BF16	Hugging Face
Ministral 3 8B Instruct 2512	Instruct post-trained	FP8	Hugging Face
Ministral 3 8B Reasoning 2512	Reasoning capable	BF16	Hugging Face
Ministral 3 14B Base 2512	Base pre-trained**	BF16	Hugging Face
Ministral 3 14B Instruct 2512	Instruct post-trained	FP8	Hugging Face
Ministral 3 14B Reasoning 2512	Reasoning capable	BF16	Hugging Face

Other formats available here.

Benchmark Results

We compare Ministral 3 to similar sized models.

Reasoning

Model	AIME25	AIME24	GPQA Diamond	LiveCodeBench
Ministral 3 14B	0.850	0.898	0.712	0.646
Qwen3-14B (Thinking)	0.737	0.837	0.663	0.593

Ministral 3 8B	0.787	0.860	0.668	0.616
Qwen3-VL-8B-Thinking	0.798	0.860	0.671	0.580

Ministral 3 3B	0.721	0.775	0.534	0.548
Qwen3-VL-4B-Thinking	0.697	0.729	0.601	0.513

Instruct

Model	Arena Hard	WildBench	MATH Maj@1	MM MTBench
Ministral 3 14B	0.551	68.5	0.904	8.49
Qwen3 14B (Non-Thinking)	0.427	65.1	0.870	NOT MULTIMODAL
Gemma3-12B-Instruct	0.436	63.2	0.854	6.70

Ministral 3 8B	0.509	66.8	0.876	8.08
Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct	0.528	66.3	0.946	8.00

Ministral 3 3B	0.305	56.8	0.830	7.83
Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct	0.438	56.8	0.900	8.01
Qwen3-VL-2B-Instruct	0.163	42.2	0.786	6.36
Gemma3-4B-Instruct	0.318	49.1	0.759	5.23

Base

Model	Multilingual MMLU	MATH CoT 2-Shot	AGIEval 5-shot	MMLU Redux 5-shot	MMLU 5-shot	TriviaQA 5-shot
Ministral 3 14B	0.742	0.676	0.648	0.820	0.794	0.749
Qwen3 14B Base	0.754	0.620	0.661	0.837	0.804	0.703
Gemma 3 12B Base	0.690	0.487	0.587	0.766	0.745	0.788

Ministral 3 8B	0.706	0.626	0.591	0.793	0.761	0.681
Qwen 3 8B Base	0.700	0.576	0.596	0.794	0.760	0.639

Ministral 3 3B	0.652	0.601	0.511	0.735	0.707	0.592
Qwen 3 4B Base	0.677	0.405	0.570	0.759	0.713	0.530
Gemma 3 4B Base	0.516	0.294	0.430	0.626	0.589	0.640

Usage

The model can be used with the following frameworks;

vllm: See here
transformers: See here

vLLM

We recommend using this model with vLLM.

Installation

Make sure to install vllm >= 0.12.0:

pip install vllm --upgrade

Doing so should automatically install mistral_common >= 1.8.6.

To check:

python -c "import mistral_common; print(mistral_common.__version__)"

You can also make use of a ready-to-go docker image or on the docker hub.

Serve

Due to their size and the FP8 format of their weights Ministral-3-3B-Instruct-2512, Ministral-3-8B-Instruct-2512 and Ministral-3-14B-Instruct-2512 can run on a single 1xH200 GPU.

A simple launch command is:

bash

vllm serve mistralai/Ministral-3-8B-Instruct-2512 \
  --tokenizer_mode mistral --config_format mistral --load_format mistral \
  --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser mistral

Key parameter notes:

enable-auto-tool-choice: Required when enabling tool usage.
tool-call-parser mistral: Required when enabling tool usage.

Additional flags:

You can set --max-model-len to preserve memory. By default it is set to 262144 which is quite large but not necessary for most scenarios.
You can set --max-num-batched-tokens to balance throughput and latency, higher means higher throughput but higher latency.

Usage of the model

Here we assume that the model mistralai/Ministral-3-8B-Instruct-2512 is served and you can ping it to the domain localhost with the port 8000 which is the default for vLLM.

Vision Reasoning

Let's see if the Ministral 3 knows when to pick a fight !

python

from datetime import datetime, timedelta

from openai import OpenAI
from huggingface_hub import hf_hub_download

# Modify OpenAI's API key and API base to use vLLM's API server.
openai_api_key = "EMPTY"
openai_api_base = "http://localhost:8000/v1"

TEMP = 0.15
MAX_TOK = 262144

client = OpenAI(
    api_key=openai_api_key,
    base_url=openai_api_base,
)

models = client.models.list()
model = models.data[0].id


def load_system_prompt(repo_id: str, filename: str) -> str:
    file_path = hf_hub_download(repo_id=repo_id, filename=filename)
    with open(file_path, "r") as file:
        system_prompt = file.read()
    today = datetime.today().strftime("%Y-%m-%d")
    yesterday = (datetime.today() - timedelta(days=1)).strftime("%Y-%m-%d")
    model_name = repo_id.split("/")[-1]
    return system_prompt.format(name=model_name, today=today, yesterday=yesterday)


SYSTEM_PROMPT = load_system_prompt(model, "SYSTEM_PROMPT.txt")
image_url = "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/essentialsdocs/images/7/70/Battle.png/revision/latest?cb=20220523172438"

messages = [
    {"role": "system", "content": SYSTEM_PROMPT},
    {
        "role": "user",
        "content": [
            {
                "type": "text",
                "text": "What action do you think I should take in this situation? List all the possible actions and explain why you think they are good or bad.",
            },
            {"type": "image_url", "image_url": {"url": image_url}},
        ],
    },
]


response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model=model,
    messages=messages,
    temperature=TEMP,
    max_tokens=MAX_TOK,
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Function Calling

Let's solve some equations thanks to our simple Python calculator tool.

python

import json
from openai import OpenAI
from huggingface_hub import hf_hub_download

# Modify OpenAI's API key and API base to use vLLM's API server.
openai_api_key = "EMPTY"
openai_api_base = "http://localhost:8000/v1"

TEMP = 0.15
MAX_TOK = 262144

client = OpenAI(
    api_key=openai_api_key,
    base_url=openai_api_base,
)

models = client.models.list()
model = models.data[0].id


def load_system_prompt(repo_id: str, filename: str) -> str:
    file_path = hf_hub_download(repo_id=repo_id, filename=filename)
    with open(file_path, "r") as file:
        system_prompt = file.read()
    return system_prompt


SYSTEM_PROMPT = load_system_prompt(model, "SYSTEM_PROMPT.txt")

image_url = "https://math-coaching.com/img/fiche/46/expressions-mathematiques.jpg"


def my_calculator(expression: str) -> str:
    return str(eval(expression))


tools = [
    {
        "type": "function",
        "function": {
            "name": "my_calculator",
            "description": "A calculator that can evaluate a mathematical expression.",
            "parameters": {
                "type": "object",
                "properties": {
                    "expression": {
                        "type": "string",
                        "description": "The mathematical expression to evaluate.",
                    },
                },
                "required": ["expression"],
            },
        },
    },
    {
        "type": "function",
        "function": {
            "name": "rewrite",
            "description": "Rewrite a given text for improved clarity",
            "parameters": {
                "type": "object",
                "properties": {
                    "text": {
                        "type": "string",
                        "description": "The input text to rewrite",
                    }
                },
            },
        },
    },
]

messages = [
    {"role": "system", "content": SYSTEM_PROMPT},
    {
        "role": "user",
        "content": [
            {
                "type": "text",
                "text": "Thanks to your calculator, compute the results for the equations that involve numbers displayed in the image.",
            },
            {
                "type": "image_url",
                "image_url": {
                    "url": image_url,
                },
            },
        ],
    },
]

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model=model,
    messages=messages,
    temperature=TEMP,
    max_tokens=MAX_TOK,
    tools=tools,
    tool_choice="auto",
)

tool_calls = response.choices[0].message.tool_calls

results = []
for tool_call in tool_calls:
    function_name = tool_call.function.name
    function_args = tool_call.function.arguments
    if function_name == "my_calculator":
        result = my_calculator(**json.loads(function_args))
        results.append(result)

messages.append({"role": "assistant", "tool_calls": tool_calls})
for tool_call, result in zip(tool_calls, results):
    messages.append(
        {
            "role": "tool",
            "tool_call_id": tool_call.id,
            "name": tool_call.function.name,
            "content": result,
        }
    )


response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model=model,
    messages=messages,
    temperature=TEMP,
    max_tokens=MAX_TOK,
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Text-Only Request

Ministral 3 can follow your instructions to the letter.

python

from openai import OpenAI
from huggingface_hub import hf_hub_download

# Modify OpenAI's API key and API base to use vLLM's API server.
openai_api_key = "EMPTY"
openai_api_base = "http://localhost:8000/v1"

TEMP = 0.15
MAX_TOK = 262144

client = OpenAI(
    api_key=openai_api_key,
    base_url=openai_api_base,
)

models = client.models.list()
model = models.data[0].id


def load_system_prompt(repo_id: str, filename: str) -> str:
    file_path = hf_hub_download(repo_id=repo_id, filename=filename)
    with open(file_path, "r") as file:
        system_prompt = file.read()
    return system_prompt


SYSTEM_PROMPT = load_system_prompt(model, "SYSTEM_PROMPT.txt")

messages = [
    {"role": "system", "content": SYSTEM_PROMPT},
    {
        "role": "user",
        "content": "Write me a sentence where every word starts with the next letter in the alphabet - start with 'a' and end with 'z'.",
    },
]

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model=model,
    messages=messages,
    temperature=TEMP,
    max_tokens=MAX_TOK,
)

assistant_message = response.choices[0].message.content
print(assistant_message)

Transformers

You can also use Ministral 3 8B Instruct 2512 with Transformers !

Transformers very recently added preliminary support for FP8, so please make sure to install from main:

uv pip install git+https://github.com/huggingface/transformers

To make the best use of our model with Transformers make sure to have installed mistral-common >= 1.8.6 to use our tokenizer.

pip install mistral-common --upgrade

Try it out by running the following snippet.

[!Tip] By default Transformers will load the checkpoint in FP8 and dequantize it to BF16 on the fly, which means the model currently does not make use of accelerated FP8-kernels. Compatibility with accelerated FP8-kernels is currently worked on and will be available in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

Then load our tokenizer along with the model and generate:

Python snippet

python

import torch
from transformers import Mistral3ForConditionalGeneration, MistralCommonBackend

model_id = "mistralai/Ministral-3-8B-Instruct-2512"

tokenizer = MistralCommonBackend.from_pretrained(model_id)
model = Mistral3ForConditionalGeneration.from_pretrained(model_id, device_map="auto")

image_url = "https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/essentialsdocs/images/7/70/Battle.png/revision/latest?cb=20220523172438"

messages = [
    {
        "role": "user",
        "content": [
            {
                "type": "text",
                "text": "What action do you think I should take in this situation? List all the possible actions and explain why you think they are good or bad.",
            },
            {"type": "image_url", "image_url": {"url": image_url}},
        ],
    },
]

tokenized = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(messages, return_tensors="pt", return_dict=True)

tokenized["input_ids"] = tokenized["input_ids"].to(device="cuda")
tokenized["pixel_values"] = tokenized["pixel_values"].to(dtype=torch.bfloat16, device="cuda")
image_sizes = [tokenized["pixel_values"].shape[-2:]]

output = model.generate(
    **tokenized,
    image_sizes=image_sizes,
    max_new_tokens=512,
)[0]

decoded_output = tokenizer.decode(output[len(tokenized["input_ids"][0]):])
print(decoded_output)

Note:

Transformers allows you to automatically convert the checkpoint to Bfloat16. To do so, simply load the model as follows:

from transformers import Mistral3ForConditionalGeneration, FineGrainedFP8Config

model_id = "mistralai/Ministral-3-8B-Instruct-2512"
model = Mistral3ForConditionalGeneration.from_pretrained(
    model_id,
    device_map="auto",
    quantization_config=FineGrainedFP8Config(dequantize=True)
)

License

This model is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.

You must not use this model in a manner that infringes, misappropriates, or otherwise violates any third party’s rights, including intellectual property rights.