Mistral never auto-expires OCR file uploads - delete them yourself

TL;DR

Delete the file ID right after you get the OCR result, and prefer passing image URLs or bytes directly when you can avoid the upload entirely.

Steps

1. Clean up your Files API uploads after Mistral OCR calls. Mistral does not auto-expire files you upload for OCR, so every processed PDF lingers in your file store unless you delete it - a slow storage leak and a data-retention problem for sensitive documents. Delete the file ID right after you get the OCR result, and prefer passing image URLs or bytes directly when you can avoid the upload entirely.

When to use

You are seeing this: Clean up your Files API uploads after Mistral OCR calls. Use this skill when you run into "Mistral never auto-expires OCR file uploads - delete them yourself".

When not to use

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Versions

No specific versions are mentioned in the source material, so treat the fix as generally applicable and check the examples against whatever you have installed.

Why this happens

The original report does not dig into a root cause. It documents the symptom and the fix that resolved it.

Source: paperless-gpt Mistral OCR integration docs: when documents are uploaded through Mistral's Files API for OCR, Mistral does not expire those uploads automatically - the integration deletes each file right after the OCR call (best-effort) because nothing is uploaded in image mode.

Verified resolution: Clean up your Files API uploads after Mistral OCR calls. Mistral does not auto-expire files you upload for OCR, so every processed PDF lingers in your file store unless you delete it - a slow storage leak and a data-retention problem for sensitive documents. Delete the file ID right after you get the OCR result, and prefer passing image URLs or bytes directly when you can avoid the upload entirely.

Source URL: https://github.com/icereed/paperless-gpt/blob/HEAD/docs/mistral_llm.md