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configure-pipeline

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Configure Nemotron Voice Agent runtime via `.env`, example-local `services.{cloud,local}.yaml`, and example-local `prompts.yaml`. Use when changing prompts, tracing, audio knobs, exposed pipelines or transports, or local NIM image overrides.

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Configure Nemotron Voice Agent Pipeline

Purpose

Edit the runtime configuration of the voice agent (built-in catalogs, prompts, feature flags) and re-apply Compose without rebuilding images.

Prerequisites

  • An existing deployment created by deploy (root compose or one of its per-example references).

Scope

  • Run commands from the repository root.
  • Limit repository-backed changes to .env, examples_registry.yaml, example-local prompts.yaml, and per-example service catalogs.
  • UI-only prompt or service tests stay in browser localStorage. Redeployment is not required.
  • Exposed UI examples and transports live in examples_registry.yaml (selection and transports fields). Use the EXAMPLE_SELECTION env var only to override the registry at runtime (e.g., for one-off benchmarks).
  • Use deploy for initial deployment, profile selection, or auth troubleshooting.

Instructions

  1. Identify the active example by inspecting the running app container (generic-assistant, multilingual-assistant, omni-assistant, omni-assistant-subagents, or frontend-backend-agent). Each example has its own catalog under its package directory in src/examples/ (the example id maps to a package dir: generic-assistant → src/examples/generic, multilingual-assistant → src/examples/multilingual, omni-assistant → src/examples/omni_assistant, omni-assistant-subagents → src/examples/omni_assistant_subagents, frontend-backend-agent → src/examples/frontend_backend_agent).

  2. Edit the smallest configuration surface that satisfies the request:

    • .env: feature flags, tracing, chat history, audio debugging, and buffering.
    • examples_registry.yaml: visible examples (selection), allowed transports (transports), and per-example slot defaults (defaults).
    • <example-package-dir>/services.cloud.yaml (remote / NVCF) and <example-package-dir>/services.local.yaml (Compose-managed local NIMs nested under workstation / dgxspark / jetson, matching the example's supported <example-id>/<hardware> recipes): built-in LLM, ASR, TTS, and example-specific role catalogs.
    • <example-package>/prompts.yaml: built-in prompt presets and prompt content for the active example.

  3. Validate:

    • Multilingual prompts must use multilingual-capable ASR and TTS from the active catalog (e.g. parakeet-rnnt, nemotron-asr-streaming-multilingual, magpie-tts). Verify the keys exist before referencing them.
    • Local catalog endpoints must use Compose service names (nemotron-asr-streaming-english:50052, nemotron-asr-streaming-multilingual:50052, parakeet-ctc-asr:50052, parakeet-rnnt-asr:50052, tts-service:50051, nvidia-llm:8000, nvidia-llm-vllm:8000, nvidia-llm-vllm-omni:8002, nemotron-speech:50051, booking-server:8001). Host-run backends auto-rewrite to the matching localhost ports.
    • ASR/TTS variants are selected via Compose profile (e.g. parakeet-ctc-asr, parakeet-rnnt-asr).
    • Workstation local Compose runs ASR/TTS and NIM LLM on GPU 0 by default. Single-GPU deployments are supported only when at least 80 GB of VRAM is available.

  4. Apply and verify using references/apply-changes.md.

Rules

  • .env changes: compose re-apply.
  • YAML catalog changes (prompts.yaml, services.*.yaml, examples_registry.yaml): compose restart of the example service. ./src and ./examples_registry.yaml are bind-mounted, so no rebuild needed.
  • Preserve unrelated keys, comments, and entries while editing.
  • ASR/TTS variants are selected by Compose profile. Parakeet variants use dedicated parakeet-ctc-asr / parakeet-rnnt-asr services; Magpie TTS uses tts-service.
  • Per-example slot defaults live in examples_registry.yaml defaults. The catalog file ordering only affects UI listings. The actual default is whatever defaults declares.

Examples

Switch the default LLM to a different cloud model:

  1. Open examples_registry.yaml and update the relevant defaults entry for the active example (e.g. change llm: [nemotron-nano] to llm: [nemotron-super]). The catalog key must exist in the active example's services.cloud.yaml / services.local.yaml.
  2. Compose restart of the example service and refresh browser.

Add a multilingual persona prompt:

  1. Add the prompt to the active example's prompts.yaml.
  2. To make it the per-example default, update examples_registry.yaml defaults.prompt for that example to the new prompt key.
  3. Ensure the active example's catalog has multilingual-capable ASR (parakeet-rnnt or nemotron-asr-streaming-multilingual) and TTS (magpie-tts).
  4. Compose restart of the example service and refresh browser.

Limitations

  • Does not deploy the stack or change profiles. Use deploy (and its per-example references) for that.
  • Source code or Dockerfile changes require an image rebuild (--build). Out of scope here.
  • UI-only ad-hoc service / prompt overrides (saved in localStorage) are intentionally not persisted. This skill writes only to repo files.

Troubleshooting

  • YAML catalog change does not appear in the UI -> compose re-apply and refresh browser.
  • .env change has no effect on a running container -> environment is read at container start. Re-apply Compose so the container restarts.
  • Local LLM/ASR/TTS missing from the Services tab -> the corresponding sidecar is not deployed or is unreachable. The catalog filters local entries by TCP reachability.
  • Local workstation LLM won't start or OOMs -> match it to the GPU in .env: NIM_KVCACHE_PERCENT (raise on No available memory for the cache blocks, lower on an OOM kill), NIM_TAGS_SELECTOR (weight precision and tensor-parallel size), and LLM_MAX_NUM_SEQS (lower if CUDA-graph capture fails). On multi-GPU hosts, match the NIM profile tp to the exposed GPUs. See "VRAM & hardware support" in docs/how-to/configure-llm.md.
  • Multilingual responses do not use the right ASR/TTS -> reorder catalog so a multilingual ASR/TTS sits first, or pick the entry from the UI Services tab.
  • ASR/TTS sidecar image fails to pull -> log in to nvcr.io with a NVIDIA_API_KEY that has access to the image. The active image is set in docker/docker-compose.<variant>.yaml.
  • Local LLM 400 (auto tool choice requires ...), or reasoning spoken / <think> leaks -> self-hosted Nemotron-3 2.x needs the parsers set (already in docker/docker-compose.nemotron3-*.yaml): NIM NIM_PASSTHROUGH_ARGS=--enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder --reasoning-parser nemotron_v3, or the same flags on vllm serve. See docs/06-troubleshooting.md.
  • Raw vLLM nemotron_v3 not found / Super (MIXED_PRECISION) won't load -> image's vLLM too old; use NGC vllm:26.05.post1-py3 (vLLM ≥ 0.20), not vllm:25.12.post1-py3 (0.12.0).