nat-user-rules

NeMo Agent Toolkit User Rules

Use this skill first when working in the NeMo Agent Toolkit repository. It routes tasks to focused skills and states rules that apply across all toolkit work.

Mandatory Rules

• Discover registered component _type values with nat info components before writing workflow, evaluation, optimizer, logging, or tracing YAML.
• Do not invent _type names or configuration keys from memory.
• Use nat only for technical identifiers such as the CLI, package name, Python namespace, paths, and environment variables.
• Treat Git submodule contents as read-only unless the user explicitly requests a change within that submodule. Exclude submodule contents from repository-wide mutation tasks by default.
• In prose, use "NVIDIA NeMo Agent Toolkit" on first use, then "NeMo Agent Toolkit" or "the toolkit".
• Prefer existing examples and docs before creating new patterns.
• Keep generated examples runnable from the repository root unless the surrounding example uses another convention.

Task Routing

Task	Skill
Installing or configuring the toolkit	skills/nat-installation/SKILL.md
Creating, editing, validating, or running workflow YAML	skills/nat-workflow-creation/SKILL.md
Choosing or composing agents	skills/nat-agent-configuration/SKILL.md
Writing custom tools, functions, or function groups	skills/nat-tools-and-functions/SKILL.md
Designing or running evaluation	skills/nat-evaluation/SKILL.md
Running optimizer workflows	skills/nat-optimization/SKILL.md
Adding tracing, logging, profiling, or telemetry exporters	skills/nat-telemetry/SKILL.md
Serving workflows or wiring MCP	skills/nat-mcp-and-serving/SKILL.md
Fixing documentation path-check failures	skills/nat-path-checks/SKILL.md
Creating or improving skills	skills/skill-evolution/SKILL.md

Discovery Commands

uv run nat info components -t function
uv run nat info components -t llm_provider
uv run nat info components -t evaluator
uv run nat info components -t logging
uv run nat info components -t tracing

Skill Evolution

If a user corrects the skill routing, a command fails and the recovery is reusable, or a reference is stale, finish the user task first. Then read skills/skill-evolution/SKILL.md and update the relevant focused skill if the lesson should generalize.