Secure your agents at: CodeAstra.dev

AI Agent Privacy Notice

Astra Sentinel found a possible pattern where sensitive user, customer, or patient data may be passed directly into an AI agent or LLM context.

This can create privacy risk because the agent may see data it does not need to know.

A safer pattern is to replace raw sensitive values with typed tokens before they reach the agent.

Example:

Before: Book appointment for John Smith, DOB 04/12/1988 After: Book appointment for [CVT:NAME:patient_name], DOB [CVT:DOB:patient_dob]

The agent can still perform the workflow, but it never sees the raw sensitive data.

Detected pattern examples:

[
  {
    "pattern": "unprotected_ai_context",
    "evidence": "self.client.chat.completions.create(model=self.model, messages=messages, temperature=0.3, max_tokens=4096, stream=true)"
  }
]

This notice was generated from a privacy scan. Please review before merging.

Secure your agents at: CodeAstra.dev

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NVIDIA CLI

A Claude Code-style agentic coding assistant for your terminal — powered by NVIDIA's free AI endpoints.

No paid API keys. No subscriptions. Just run nv chat.

Why NVIDIA CLI? • Features • Quick Start • Usage • Architecture • Roadmap • Contributing

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💡 Why NVIDIA CLI?

Tools like Claude Code and Aider are powerful — but they require paid API subscriptions that add up fast.

NVIDIA CLI gives you the same agentic coding experience using NVIDIA's free-tier AI endpoints. If you have an NVIDIA developer account, you can run a full multi-agent coding assistant with persistent memory, installable skills, and file-based identity — completely free.

	NVIDIA CLI	Claude Code	Aider
API Cost	✅ Free tier available	💰 Paid (Anthropic API)	💰 Paid (OpenAI/Anthropic)
Runs in terminal	✅	✅	✅
Persistent memory	✅ Hybrid vector + BM25	❌	❌
Installable skills	✅ With security scanning	❌	❌
Agent identity/soul	✅ File-based	❌	❌
Multi-agent support	✅	❌	❌
Self-hostable	✅	❌	✅

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✨ Features

🤖 Multi-Agent System

Create and manage multiple AI agents, each with their own configuration, model preferences, and behaviour. Spawn subagents for parallel task execution.

nv agent list              # List all agents
nv agent create mybot      # Create a new agent
nv agent delete mybot      # Remove an agent

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👤 Soul / Identity System

Give your agents a persistent personality through file-based identity documents. The Soul acts as active middleware, injecting personality and context into every interaction — inspired by OpenClaw.

File	Purpose
SOUL.md	Core personality principles and values
IDENTITY.md	Agent name, emoji, and avatar
USER.md	Human preferences and working style
MEMORY.md	Curated long-term memories
HEARTBEAT.md	Periodic background task definitions

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🛡️ Skills System with Security Scanning

Discover, install, and manage agent skills from any source. Every skill is automatically scanned for dangerous patterns before installation — safe to run inside automated agentic loops.

nv skill list              # List installed skills
nv skill install <path>    # Install a skill (pip, npm, brew, or git)
nv skill uninstall <name>  # Remove a skill

Skills are auto-discovered via SKILL.md files and scanned for eval, exec, and subprocess abuse before execution.

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🧠 Hybrid Memory (Vector + BM25)

Persistent memory that actually finds what you need — combining semantic vector search with traditional keyword matching for best-of-both-worlds recall.

nv memory add "Project uses FastAPI with PostgreSQL"
nv memory search "database setup"

• SQLite-backed — no external database required
• Embedding providers: OpenAI or fully local via sentence-transformers
• Automatic context injection — relevant memories surface in every conversation

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💓 Heartbeat System

Schedule periodic background tasks that run inside your agent's context — ideal for maintenance checks, data syncing, or regular reminders.

nv heartbeat status        # Check all heartbeat task statuses

• Quiet hours support — won't interrupt you at 2am
• Batch processing for grouped checks

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🔀 Permission Modes

Fine-grained control over how the agent interacts with your filesystem:

Mode	Behaviour
ask	Always confirm before any action (default, safest)
accept_edits	Auto-accept file edits, confirm everything else
auto	Auto-approve safe operations
never	Full dry-run — no actions executed

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🧩 Available Models

All models run on NVIDIA's API. Free-tier access available at build.nvidia.com.

Alias	Model
default	deepseek-ai/deepseek-v3.2
nano	nvidia/nemotron-nano-12b-v2-vl
llama70	nvidia/llama-3.1-nemotron-70b-instruct
llama8	meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct

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🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Python 3.9+
• A free NVIDIA API key from build.nvidia.com

Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/SingularityAI-Dev/Nvidia-CLI.git
cd Nvidia-CLI

# Create and activate a virtual environment
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate

# Install
pip install -e .

Set Up Your API Key

# Option 1: Environment variable (recommended)
export NVIDIA_API_KEY="nvapi-your-key-here"

# Option 2: .env file
echo 'NVIDIA_API_KEY=nvapi-your-key-here' > .env

# Option 3: Just run nv chat — it will prompt you on first launch
nv chat

Your key is stored in ~/.nv-cli-config/config.json after first setup. You're good to go.

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📖 Usage

Start a chat session

nv chat

On first run in a project, use /init to have the agent analyse your codebase and build a context map:

nv> /init
[*] Analysing codebase...
[*] Context saved to .nv/NVIDIA.md

nv> How is authentication handled in this project?

One-shot queries

nv ask "What is the difference between CUDA and OpenCL?"

In-chat slash commands

Command	Description
/init	Analyse codebase and generate a context file
/add <file>	Load a file into the current conversation
/clear	Reset conversation and file context
/model <name>	Switch AI model mid-session
/skill	Manage skills from within chat
/help	Show all available commands
/quit	Exit with a session summary

Agent management

nv agent create researcher   # Create a specialist agent
nv agent list                # See all your agents
nv config edit               # Edit agent configuration

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🏗️ Architecture

nv_cli/
├── agents/          # ReActAgent loop & subagent orchestration
├── config/          # Configuration dataclasses & validation
├── heartbeat/       # Background task manager & scheduler
├── memory/          # Hybrid search (vector embeddings + BM25)
├── skills/          # Multi-installer (pip/npm/brew/git) & security scanner
├── soul/            # File-based identity loading (OpenClaw-style)
├── tools/           # Built-in tool registry & implementations
└── utils/           # Shared utilities

Key design decisions:

• OpenAI-compatible SDK — Uses NVIDIA's OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so any model on the NVIDIA platform works out of the box
• ReAct Agent Loop — Think → select tool → execute → observe → repeat
• File-based Identity — Agent personality defined in markdown, not hardcoded prompts
• Modular architecture — Each subsystem is fully independent with clean interfaces

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🗺️ Roadmap

• Plugin marketplace for community skills
• Multi-agent collaboration workflows
• Web UI dashboard
• Voice input/output support
• RAG pipeline integration
• Structured outputs with function calling

Have a feature request? Open an issue — contributions are very welcome.

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for the full guide.

Quick start for contributors:

# Fork and clone
git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/Nvidia-CLI.git
cd Nvidia-CLI

# Set up dev environment
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Create a branch and submit a PR
git checkout -b feature/your-feature

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📄 License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.

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🙏 Acknowledgments

• NVIDIA AI Foundation for the free AI model endpoints
• OpenClaw for the soul/identity system inspiration
• Typer and Rich for the terminal experience
• prompt_toolkit for interactive input

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If this project saved you money on API bills, consider giving it a ⭐ — it helps more than you'd think.

Built with ❤️ using NVIDIA AI • GitHub • Issues