> This page is for version 1.1.0 (Latest) (default).
> For other versions, use one of these documentation indexes:
> - 1.1.0 (Latest) (default): https://docs.nvidia.com/nim/cosmos-embed1/1.1.0/llms.txt
> - 1.0.0: https://docs.nvidia.com/nim/cosmos-embed1/1.0.0/llms.txt

> For clean Markdown of any page, append .md to the page URL.
> For a complete documentation index, see https://docs.nvidia.com/nim/cosmos-embed1/llms.txt.
> For AI client integration (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.), connect to the MCP server at https://docs.nvidia.com/nim/cosmos-embed1/_mcp/server.

# Configuring the NIM

The following environment variables can be used to configure the NIM at runtime:

| ENV | Required | Default | Notes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NGC_API_KEY | Yes | — | Your NGC API key for model access. |
| NIM_HTTP_API_PORT | No | 8000 | The port for the HTTP API server. |
| USE_CUDA_IPC | No | Auto-detected | Enables CUDA IPC for inter-process communication. If not explicitly set, this value will be auto-detected. <br />0: Disabled <br />1: Enabled |
| NIM_ENABLE_OTEL | No | True | Enables OpenTelemetry. |
| CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES | No | All | A comma-separated list of GPU IDs to use |
| NIM_CACHE_PATH | No | /opt/nim/.cache | The default location in the NIM to use for caching. |
| NIM_LOG_LEVEL | No | DEFAULT | Controls NIM logging verbosity. Supported levels are ['DEFAULT', 'DEBUG', 'INFO', 'WARNING', 'ERROR', 'CRITICAL', 'TRACE'] |
| NIM_TRITON_LOG_VERBOSE | No | 0 | Controls logging verbosity of the Triton server component. Supported values are [0,1,2,3,4,5], with 0 being the least verbose and 5 being the most verbose option. |

Additional Runtime Variables:

- `–tmpfs /tmp/ram,rw,size=2g`: Can be used to configure `/tmp/ram` to use host memory space for potential speed up on some systems.

## Host caching via LOCAL_NIM_CACHE

To persist model downloads across container restarts and align with other NIMs, bind mount a host cache directory using `LOCAL_NIM_CACHE` (see Quickstart for example commands). The directory you mount on the host becomes the in-container `/opt/nim/.cache` path, which is also the value of `NIM_CACHE_PATH`.

## Notes on input resolution and variants

The current release exposes the model as `cosmos-embed1` and bundles the 224p variant, which produces 256‑dimensional embeddings. Input videos using supported codecs and sizes are automatically resized by the NIM. Variant selection is not configurable in this release.