Agent Skills

Agent Skills are reusable, self-contained capabilities that coding agents (such as Claude Code and Codex) can load to deploy and operate the VSS Blueprint. Each Skill follows the agentskills.io specification and packages prompts, reference data, and helper scripts so the coding agent can deploy a VSS profile, manage cameras and streams, query incidents, run searches, summarize videos, and generate reports. All from natural-language requests.

Skill Anatomy

Each VSS Skill is a folder under the skills/ directory of the VSS Blueprint repository, inside the category folder that describes when you reach for it (deployment/, operations/, tools/, benchmarking/) or, for the vss-build-vision-ai entry point, at the top level. A VSS Skill folder contains the following:

• A SKILL.md file with YAML frontmatter declaring the Skill’s name, description, version, and license. The description tells the coding agent when to invoke that VSS Skill. For example, when the user asks to deploy a VSS profile, add a camera, query alerts, or summarize a video.
• The body of SKILL.md documents the VSS commands, API calls, and patterns the Skill uses. Typically curl calls against the VSS REST API, the VA-MCP server, or VIOS.
• Optional reference files such as VSS deployment notes, alert-type prompt templates, or example payloads for the workflow the Skill targets.
• Optional evaluation specs under eval/ that are exercised by the VSS Skills Eval CI workflow on every pull request that touches the skills/ directory of the VSS Blueprint repository.

When a coding agent loads its skills directory, it reads each SKILL.md frontmatter and adds the VSS Skill to its tool list. The agent then matches user requests against the Skills’ descriptions and invokes the appropriate VSS Skill for each task. After installing a new Skill, start a new agent session before invoking it. Symlinked Skills do not need to be reinstalled after a repository update; start a new session to load the updated Skill.

Usage Patterns

VSS Agent Skills are used in two complementary ways:

• Deployment. A coding agent such as Claude Code or Codex loads the Skills, takes a natural-language request like “Deploy VSS for video search”, and invokes vss-build-vision-ai to select the profile or capability set, run pre-flight checks, generate the Compose plan, and bring up the stack. The developer does not need to remember exact flags, profile names, or compose commands.
• Runtime. Once VSS is running, an always-on coding agent such as NemoClaw loads the same Skills and acts as the operational interface to the deployment. The user can manage cameras and streams, submit and verify alerts, run searches, summarize videos, and generate reports through natural-language chat.

Available Skills

The official VSS Agent Skills are published in the skills/ folder of the VSS Blueprint repository on GitHub, and mirrored to the public NVIDIA Skills catalog at github.com/nvidia/skills.

Skills are grouped in the repository by when you reach for them: deployment/ stands a stack up, operations/ drives one that is already running, tools/ and benchmarking/ are standalone utilities, and vss-build-vision-ai sits at the top level as the entry point that composes the rest. A Skill’s invocable name is its own directory name — the category is repository organisation and never appears in the installed path or in the slash command.

Entry point

Deployment

Operations

Tools

Benchmarking

vss-deploy-profile was removed in VSS 3.3.0. Use vss-build-vision-ai instead — the VSS 3.3.0 Release Notes map its -p / -m flags to the equivalent workflows.

Report Skill Error Handling

The vss-generate-video-report skill applies the following fail-fast handling:

• Profile probe failure: stop and ask the user to deploy the required profile via vss-build-vision-ai (base for Mode A, alerts for Mode B).
• Clip URL rewrite env missing: if any of VSS_PUBLIC_HTTP_PROTOCOL, VSS_PUBLIC_HOST, or VSS_PUBLIC_PORT is unset, fail with the missing variable instead of emitting malformed browser URLs.
• VLM endpoint/model mismatch: if ${VLM_ENDPOINT}/models fails or does not list ${VLM_MODEL}, try the alternate backend once; otherwise surface the concrete error.
• Remote endpoint cannot fetch internal clip URL: do not issue a doomed VLM request; return a reachability requirement for VIDEO_URL instead.
• No incidents in Mode B: return an explicit zero-results report for the requested range/scope; do not invent incidents and do not auto-switch to Mode A.

Supported Agent Harnesses

VSS Agent Skills can be loaded by any agent harness that follows the agentskills.io specification. The following agent harnesses are validated:

• Claude Code
• OpenAI Codex
• OpenClaw
• NemoClaw

For more information on agent harnesses with VSS, see Agent Harnesses. Each agent harness expects Skills under a standard directory:

Discovering and invoking a Skill

From a new session opened at the checkout root, ask the agent to read skills/README.md and list the installed VSS Skills. Installation takes a Skill directory containing SKILL.md; the category name operations is not part of the invocable name. If discovery misses a Skill, give its path or use an explicit invocation.

Use a model with tool use and enough context for the deployment plan. Choose high reasoning effort if your host exposes that control. The validation statement above records the tested model; it does not establish that every model/effort combination has been tested. If an intake question tool is unavailable, ask the agent to present the question in ordinary conversation.

Installing Skills

Skills are installed by asking the coding agent itself to read the Skills catalog and register each Skill into the host’s skills directory. Symlinks are used so that a git pull of the Blueprint repository keeps every Skill up to date automatically.

Step 1: Clone the VSS Blueprint repository

git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA-AI-Blueprints/video-search-and-summarization.git
cd video-search-and-summarization
git checkout "develop"

Step 2: Ask the coding agent to install the Skills

vss-build-vision-ai is the entry point — it composes and deploys a stack from an intent. It deliberately stops at the deploy boundary, routing search, summarization, VIOS, alerts, reports, and video Q&A to the matching operations Skill. Installing it on its own gives an agent that can build a stack but not drive it, so install the entry point together with the operations Skills:

Install these VSS skills for this host: skills/vss-build-vision-ai/ and every skill
under skills/operations/. Use the host's standard skills directory, naming each
install after the skill's own directory name and not its category. Symlink rather
than copying so a git pull here keeps them current, and skip any already pointing at
this checkout. List what you registered and where.

Add skills/deployment/ when you need a single microservice on its own or a Helm deployment, skills/tools/ for standalone camera calibration, and skills/benchmarking/ for performance measurement. To install the whole catalog:

Read skills/README.md and every SKILL.md file under skills/. For each skill in the
catalog, install it for this host so I can invoke it from a shell or chat session.
Use the host's standard skills directory, naming each install after the skill's own
directory name rather than its category. Symlink each skill folder rather than
copying it so a git pull here keeps every install up to date. Skip skills that are
already installed and pointing at this checkout. When you're done, list the skills
you registered and which directory you used.

The agent reads each SKILL.md frontmatter, creates the symlinks, and confirms what is installed. The Skills become invokable in the next agent session.

To install only a single Skill, give the agent the path as it appears in the catalog above — most Skills sit inside a category, while vss-build-vision-ai is at the top of skills/:

Install only skills/<path-from-the-catalog>/ for this host the same way — for example
skills/operations/vss-search-archive/ or skills/vss-build-vision-ai/. Register it under
the skill's own directory name, without any category prefix.

Using Skills

With VSS Agent Skills installed, prompt the coding agent in natural language to deploy a profile or operate the deployment. The agent invokes the matching Skill from the catalog. After installing Skills, see the following guides to get started:

• Quickstart: Agent Skills Walkthrough — deploy and operate the base profile using Skills.
• Build Vision AI Skill — primary deployment entry point for stock profiles, warehouse profiles, and custom vision stacks.
• Video Summarization — skills-based workflow for video summarization.
• Video Search — skills-based workflow for natural language video search.
• Real-Time Alerts — skills-based workflow for real-time alert generation.

Once the deployment is up and running, Skills can be used to perform workflow tasks or interact with individual microservices. Here are some prompt examples which would call the vss-manage-video-io-storage Skill for Video IO and Storage (VIOS):

Add an RTSP camera at rtsp://10.0.0.5:554/stream1.

Extract a video clip from 30 to 40 seconds (mp4 container) from the uploaded video
and return a shareable URL.

Updating Skills

After a git pull of the Blueprint repository, the symlinks already resolve to the updated content, so a content change needs no action. Two cases do, because an install is a symlink to a repository path rather than to a name: a new Skill has no symlink yet, and a Skill that moved between category folders (or was renamed) leaves its old symlink dangling — the name still appears installed while its target no longer exists. To handle both, ask the agent:

Re-check this host's skills directory against skills/README.md. Add a symlink for any
catalog skill that is missing. Then check every VSS skill symlink already there: if its
target no longer exists, or points somewhere other than that skill's current path in
this checkout, repoint it. Remove symlinks for skills that are no longer in the catalog.
Report what you added, repointed, and removed.

To uninstall every Skill, ask the agent:

Remove every VSS skill symlink you previously created under this host's skills
directory.

Related Documentation

• VSS Agents - The in-product agent that runs inside a deployed VSS workflow.
• Agent Workflows - End-to-end workflows demonstrated through developer profiles.