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Set Up NVIDIA NIM

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NemoClaw can pull, start, and manage a local NVIDIA NIM container on hosts with a NIM-capable NVIDIA GPU. This provider is experimental and requires an explicit opt-in.

Prerequisites

  • Use a host with a NIM-capable NVIDIA GPU.
  • Install the NVIDIA Container Toolkit and provide a CDI specification for the GPU.
  • Authenticate Docker to nvcr.io, or run interactive onboarding with an NGC API key available.

Some NIM images do not publish a linux/arm64 manifest for DGX Spark and DGX Station. NemoClaw warns and still attempts the selected image. If the registry has no matching platform manifest, choose NVIDIA Endpoints, managed vLLM, or another provider with an image for the host architecture.

Run Onboarding

Enable experimental providers and start the wizard.

$NEMOCLAW_EXPERIMENTAL=1 nemoclaw onboard

Select Local NVIDIA NIM [experimental]. NemoClaw filters the available models by GPU VRAM, pulls the selected image, starts the container, and waits for it to become healthy. On hosts with mixed NVIDIA GPU models, the preflight summary shows each detected GPU model and the total VRAM used for model selection.

On Docker 29.x and hosts that use the containerd image store, NemoClaw resolves the host-platform manifest digest before pulling a multi-architecture image when the registry publishes an index. It pulls repo@digest and retags the image locally so attestation metadata for other architectures does not block the selected platform. When no matching index is available, NemoClaw falls back to pulling the tag.

Authenticate with NGC

NVIDIA hosts NIM images on nvcr.io, and Docker requires NGC registry authentication to pull them. When Docker is not already logged in, interactive onboarding prompts for an NGC API key. NemoClaw masks the input and passes the key to docker login nvcr.io through --password-stdin so it is not written to disk or shell history. It retries once after an invalid key.

Non-interactive onboarding cannot prompt for registry credentials. Run docker login nvcr.io before starting non-interactive onboarding.

When NGC_API_KEY or NVIDIA_INFERENCE_API_KEY is already exported, NemoClaw passes it into the managed NIM container through the process environment instead of command-line arguments.

Understand Model Detection

If the NIM container exits before its health endpoint becomes ready, onboarding stops and prints the last container log lines. After NIM becomes healthy, NemoClaw reads /v1/models and uses the served model ID for validation when it differs from the catalog name. NemoClaw rejects unsafe served IDs instead of writing them into sandbox configuration.

NIM uses vLLM internally. NemoClaw uses the Chat Completions API path and does not probe the Responses API for this provider.

Run Non-Interactive Onboarding

Authenticate Docker to nvcr.io, then run onboarding with the experimental flag and NIM provider selection.

$NEMOCLAW_EXPERIMENTAL=1 \
>  NEMOCLAW_PROVIDER=nim \
>  nemoclaw onboard --non-interactive

Set NEMOCLAW_MODEL to select a specific model.