One Prompt, Start to Finish

This reading follows one MuggsOfPrompts prompt through six steps and then describes three ways the path can break.

The Six Steps

(1) First, a student presses the RUN button, and the browser sends a request to the course site's server. (2) Next, that server reads the station's cookie and counts the station's previous runs today. (3) Then the server adds the day's stored prompt and sends three requests to Mistral's API, one for each model. (4) After that, Mistral's servers run the three models, and each model generates a separate response. (5) Next, Mistral's servers send the text back in pieces to the course site's server. (6) Finally, the course site's server passes each piece to the browser, which displays it in one of three panes.

While the student waits, the button reads "SENDING…" and a timer counts the seconds, which separates a working run from a stalled one. The panes fill with text as the pieces arrive, so the three answers grow at different rates.

Three Ways the Path Breaks

The first break is a lost network connection, which happens when the wireless network is disconnected. Without a connection, the browser cannot send its request, so nothing reaches either server, and the message "Lost the connection." appears on the page.

The second break is a server that does not answer, such as when Mistral's servers cannot be reached from the course site. In that case, the course site's server still responds to the browser, and the pane displays the words "Could not reach the model" instead of generated text. If a model has not finished within 45 seconds, the course site's server stops waiting, and the pane reports that no response came back in time.

The third break is too many requests arriving at once. A server that refuses requests arriving too quickly is practicing rate limiting, and its refusal carries the status code 429, which means Too Many Requests. MuggsOfPrompts displays "Rate limited." in the pane whenever Mistral refuses a request this way. The course site enforces its own limit as well by refusing a station's fourth run of the day.

Sources: MuggsOfPrompts code, course site (2026); MDN Web Docs, 429 Too Many Requests (2026); Mistral AI, Chat Completion API (n.d.).