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Kermt Pretrain Scratch

NVIDIAOfficialPublished by NVIDIA

  • Skill
  • Workflow
  • Data and AI
  • Apache-2.0
  • Medium risk
  • Has scripts

From the author

Pretrain a fresh KERMT model from scratch on a user-provided corpus. Builds a new vocabulary from the corpus, instantiates the model architecture from defaults, and launches pretrain_ddp.py inside the kermt container (detached for long runs). Unlike kermt-continue-pretrain, no starting checkpoint is loaded — the model is randomly initialized.
— the description by NVIDIA

AutoGineer summary

Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author

This skill orchestrates the end-to-end pretraining of a KERMT model from scratch. Unlike continuing an existing model, this process initializes the model randomly and builds a new vocabulary directly from the user-provided corpus. It is a computationally intensive workflow designed for domain-specific chemistry research where existing checkpoints are insufficient. The skill handles data validation, vocabulary generation, and the launch of distributed training within a containerized environment.

What it does

  • Validates the user-provided SMILES corpus for pretraining compatibility.
  • Generates a fresh vocabulary based on the provided dataset.
  • Configures model architecture using default settings.
  • Launches a detached distributed training process using the KERMT container.
  • Provides a detailed run manifest for reproducibility and tracking.
  • Offers monitoring guidance for long-running training sessions.

When to use it

  • When you need to train a model on a custom chemistry domain not covered by released checkpoints.
  • When you require a full end-to-end reproduction of a pretraining configuration.
  • When you have sufficient compute resources for a multi-day training job.

Advantages

  • Enables complete control over the model's training data and vocabulary.
  • Supports multiple pretraining objectives including vocab, cmim, and hybrid modes.
  • Ensures reproducibility through detailed manifest generation and command replay.
  • Automates complex containerized orchestration for distributed training.

Usage examples

“Pretrain a new KERMT model from scratch using my_corpus.csv with the hybrid objective.”
The agent validates the CSV, builds a fresh vocabulary, estimates the required compute time, and launches the training process in a detached container.
“Start a scratch pretraining run on my_data.csv and log to wandb.”
The agent initiates the pretraining workflow, configuring the environment for Weights & Biases logging and providing the run directory for monitoring.

Install

  1. Download the skill as a ZIP:

    https://autogineer.com/agent-skills/nvidia/kermt-pretrain-scratch/download
  2. Unzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:

    mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip kermt-pretrain-scratch.zip -d .agents/skills

Documentation by NVIDIA

kermt-pretrain-scratch

Pretrain a brand-new KERMT model from scratch on a user-provided corpus. Useful when you want to retrain a model on a custom chemistry domain rather than extending one of the released checkpoints. Significantly more expensive than kermt-continue-pretrain — no warm start, so the loss curves need to descend from scratch over many epochs.

Skill and runtime paths

Set SKILL_DIR to the absolute path of this installed skill directory. Export KERMT_REPO as the absolute path to the KERMT checkout used for model execution. The bundled container helper mounts that checkout at /workspace and this skill at /skill (read-only). Commands inside the container use /skill/scripts/; defaults are bundled in config/.

Hardware requirements

Same as kermt-continue-pretrain:

  • GPUs: 1–N CUDA-capable. The runner auto-detects via torch.cuda.device_count(); --gpus 0,2 overrides. Single-GPU fallback: --batch_size 32 --save_interval 500. Multi-GPU keeps defaults (--batch_size 256 etc.). Note: --gpus N uses torch.cuda indexing, which can differ from nvidia-smi's display order on multi-GPU hosts (PCI bus vs. CUDA enumeration). To target a specific physical GPU, set CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES before invoking, or run python -c "import torch; print([torch.cuda.get_device_name(i) for i in range(torch.cuda.device_count())])" to confirm which device you're picking.

  • VRAM: the default --batch-size 256 is sized for A100-class hardware (80 GB VRAM). On smaller GPUs, downscale to avoid OOM:

    GPU classVRAMSuggested --batch-size
    L4, T4, V100 16 GB16–24 GB32–64
    A100 40 GB, L40, A4040–48 GB128
    A100 80 GB, H100, H20080 GB256 (default)

    These are rough starting points — pass --batch-size N to override.

  • Disk: tens of GB for shards + vocab + checkpoints, scaled by epochs.

  • Wall time: this is the big difference. Pretraining from scratch on an 11M-mol corpus at 100 epochs typically takes days even on a multi-GPU box. The skill prints an estimate before launching; confirm with the user.

When to invoke

  • User wants to train a new model on a custom corpus (e.g. domain-specific chemistry that the released ckpts don't cover).

  • User wants to reproduce a pretrain config end-to-end without depending on a released ckpt.

For continuing an existing released ckpt, use kermt-continue-pretrain. For adding a cMIM decoder to an encoder-only grover_base ckpt, use kermt-add-cmim-pretrain.

Inputs

Required:

  • --csv <path> — the pretrain corpus CSV with a smiles column. Single file by convention; multi-file corpora deferred. Use --val-csv for a separate validation set.

  • --pretrain-target-mode {vocab|cmim|hybrid} — which pretrain objective to use. No default — must be set explicitly so the user makes an informed choice:

    • vocab — original GROVER-style atom + bond vocab prediction (encoder-only output, lightweight).

    • cmim — contrastive + SMILES reconstruction objective. Requires building a SMILES vocab from the corpus.

    • hybrid — both vocab and contrastive objectives jointly (the state-of-the-art config from the KERMT manuscript).

Optional:

  • --val-csv <path> — separate validation CSV. Without it, prepare_data auto-splits the input by --val-frac 0.1 (random shuffle with --seed).

  • Training-hyperparameter overrides: --epochs N / --batch-size N / --init-lr F / --max-lr F / --final-lr F / --warmup-epochs F / --weight-decay F / --dropout F / --save-interval N / --seed N. Anything not given is filled from config/defaults_pretrain.json.

  • --vocab-loss-weight F (hybrid only) / --latent-dim N / --contrastive-temperature F (cmim and hybrid only).

  • --wandb-project NAME / --wandb-run-name NAME — optional Weights & Biases logging. When --wandb-project is set, rank 0 logs train/val losses; the run name is honored only alongside a project. Off by default.

  • --gpus 0,2 — restrict to a GPU subset.

Workflow

Let $KERMT_REPO be the path to your kermt repo checkout.

  1. Pre-flight: ensure container + system probe (same as kermt-continue-pretrain step 1). Refuse to proceed if check_system reports gaps.

  2. Compute run directory.

    RUN_DIR=$KERMT_REPO/runs/pretrain-scratch_$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H-%M-%SZ)
  3. Validate the corpus (no ckpt to validate, so this is the only input check):

    "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/kermt_container.sh" run --data <user-csv> -- \
        "python /skill/scripts/check_data.py --mode pretrain --csv /data/<basename>"

    Abort on ok: false.

  4. Prepare the data — no vocab pass-through (we want fresh vocab from corpus):

    "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/kermt_container.sh" run --data <user-csv> --run-dir $RUN_DIR -- \
        "python /skill/scripts/prepare_data.py --mode pretrain \\
             --csv /data/<basename> --out /runs/data \\
             [--val-csv /data/<val-basename>] [--val-frac 0.1] [--seed 0]"

    Outputs land at $RUN_DIR/data/prepare_data.json with vocab_source: "built_fresh".

  5. Estimate runtime + warn loudly. This is critical for pretrain-from-scratch:

    • "Pretraining from scratch is days-scale even on multi-GPU; the released KERMT checkpoints were each trained on millions of molecules for hundreds of GPU-hours. If you mainly want to leverage existing knowledge for a downstream task, consider kermt-continue-pretrain from a released ckpt instead, which converges in hours instead of days."

    • Show the corpus size × epochs × GPU count → estimated wall time.

    • Ask for explicit confirmation unless --yes was given.

  6. Launch the runner detached.

    "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/kermt_container.sh" run_detached \\
        --name kermt-pretrain-scratch-<ts> \\
        --run-dir $RUN_DIR -- \\
        "python /skill/scripts/run_pretrain_local.py \\
             --from-scratch --pretrain-target-mode <vocab|cmim|hybrid> \\
             --prepare-manifest /runs/data/prepare_data.json \\
             --out /runs \\
             [--epochs N --batch-size N ...]"

    Note: NO --ckpt flag (the runner refuses if both --from-scratch and --ckpt are given). The runner uses the arch group from config/defaults_pretrain.json to size the model.

  7. Report to the user. Always include all of the following — do not omit the TensorBoard line under output-length pressure:

    • Container name + id

    • $RUN_DIR/run.json (the manifest with workflow: pretrain-scratch, from_scratch: true, vocab_check: null, arch from defaults, full cmd_replay)

    • Log file: $RUN_DIR/logs/pretrain_ddp.log

    • TensorBoard: $RUN_DIR/logs/tb (open with tensorboard --logdir $RUN_DIR/logs/tb)

    • Suggest kermt-monitor <RUN_DIR> for progress.

Hard rules

  • Never accept a --ckpt flag. From-scratch is exclusive with input ckpt — the runner enforces this; the skill should too.

  • Never silently default --pretrain-target-mode. This is a significant architectural choice (vocab = lightweight, hybrid = SOTA). Prompt the user if not given on the CLI.

  • Strong warning before launching. From-scratch pretrain is the most expensive workflow. The user needs to know what they're committing to.

Common errors

  • --pretrain-target-mode is required when --from-scratch is set → user forgot the mode flag. Prompt.

  • --from-scratch is incompatible with --ckpt → user provided both; ask which one they meant.

  • defaults_pretrain.json has no arch group → repo state issue (should never happen on a fresh clone); points the user at running kermt-setup again.

What's in the manifest after a from-scratch run

Same reproducibility fields as continue-pretrain (repo.commit, kermt_image, cmd_replay, args_applied), plus:

  • workflow: "pretrain-scratch"

  • from_scratch: true

  • inputs.ckpt: null

  • ckpt_symlink: null

  • vocab_check: null (not verified — vocab built from corpus is authoritative for from-scratch)

  • arch: the values pulled from config/defaults_pretrain.json's arch group (with any future CLI overrides applied).

Replayability

Same as continue-pretrain: cmd_replay is a copy-pasteable command. If ok_to_replay: false, the kermt repo working tree was dirty at launch time — check repo.commit and git checkout it first.

Files

scripts/check_data.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: Copyright (c) 2025 NVIDIA CORPORATION & AFFILIATES. All rights reserved.
# SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0

"""Validate a CSV input for a given KERMT agent workflow.

Mode-dispatched. Emits a single JSON object to stdout that the calling skill
parses to decide whether to proceed (`ok: true`) or surface a structured error
back to the user (`ok: false` with `errors[]`). The JSON shape is stable
across modes; only the contract for what counts as `ok` differs per mode.

Modes
-----
pretrain    Pretrain corpus CSV. Requires a `smiles` column. Other columns
            are ignored. Label columns are not required (and not expected).

finetune    Labeled CSV for a downstream task. Requires `smiles` plus
            >=1 numeric target column. Target columns are specified via
            `--targets <col1> <col2> ...`. If `--targets` is omitted, the
            validator auto-detects numeric non-smiles columns and reports
            them; the skill will then prompt the user to confirm or refine.

inference   CSV to run predictions on. Requires `smiles`. Target columns are
            not required (and not expected — predictions are written out).

embed       CSV to extract embeddings from. Requires `smiles` only.

SMILES validation
-----------------
By default the validator samples up to 20 SMILES (first 10 + last 10) and
checks each one parses with RDKit. Pass `--strict-rdkit` to parse every
SMILES (slow on large corpora). A SMILES is considered "invalid" if RDKit
returns `None` from `MolFromSmiles(smi, sanitize=True)` — empty / null
rows are counted separately.

Duplicate-SMILES detection is always full (cheap).

Output (stdout)
---------------
{
  "ok": true | false,
  "mode": str,
  "csv_path": str,
  "num_rows": int,
  "num_columns": int,
  "columns": [str, ...],
  "has_smiles_column": bool,
  "smiles_column_name": str | null,    // actual header used (may differ in case)
  "num_blank_smiles": int,
  "num_invalid_smiles": int,           // among the parsed sample
  "smiles_check_method": "sampled" | "full",
  "smiles_check_count": int,
  "num_duplicate_smiles": int,
  "target_columns": [str, ...],        // populated only for finetune mode
  "num_missing_per_target": { col: int, ... },
  "auto_detected_targets": [str, ...], // when --targets is omitted in finetune mode
  "errors": [str, ...],
  "warnings": [str, ...]
}

Exit code: 0 on `ok: true`, 1 on `ok: false`. Loader exceptions are caught
and surfaced into `errors[]` with `ok: false` (still exit 1).

CLI
---
    check_data.py --mode <mode> --csv <path>
                  [--targets <col1> <col2> ...]   # finetune only
                  [--strict-rdkit]                # full SMILES parse
"""
from __future__ import annotations

import argparse
import json
import sys
import traceback
from pathlib import Path
from typing import Any

import pandas as pd


CANONICAL_SMILES_COLUMN = "smiles"
SMILES_SAMPLE_PER_END = 10  # how many SMILES from head + how many from tail to sample


def _find_smiles_column(columns: list[str]) -> str | None:
    """Return the actual column header matching 'smiles' case-insensitively, or None."""
    for c in columns:
        if c.lower() == CANONICAL_SMILES_COLUMN:
            return c
    return None


def _parse_smiles_sample(smiles_values: list[str], full: bool) -> tuple[int, int, str]:
    """Run RDKit MolFromSmiles on a sample or all of the SMILES. Returns
    (num_parsed, num_invalid, method)."""
    # Import here so the script can still surface a clean JSON error if RDKit
    # is unavailable in the host env.
    try:
        from rdkit import Chem
        from rdkit import RDLogger
        RDLogger.DisableLog("rdApp.*")  # suppress per-mol parse warnings
    except ImportError as exc:
        raise RuntimeError(
            f"RDKit is not importable in this environment: {exc}. "
            "Run check_data.py inside the kermt container."
        ) from exc

    if full or len(smiles_values) <= 2 * SMILES_SAMPLE_PER_END:
        sample = smiles_values
        method = "full"
    else:
        sample = smiles_values[:SMILES_SAMPLE_PER_END] + smiles_values[-SMILES_SAMPLE_PER_END:]
        method = "sampled"

    invalid = 0
    parsed = 0
    for smi in sample:
        if not smi:  # already counted as blank elsewhere
            continue
        parsed += 1
        mol = Chem.MolFromSmiles(smi, sanitize=True)
        if mol is None:
            invalid += 1
    return parsed, invalid, method


def _autodetect_target_columns(df: pd.DataFrame, smiles_col: str) -> list[str]:
    """Pick columns that look like numeric targets. A column qualifies if it
    is (a) not the smiles column and (b) >=80% of non-null values convert to float.
    Heuristic only — returned for the skill to prompt the user to confirm."""
    candidates: list[str] = []
    for col in df.columns:
        if col == smiles_col:
            continue
        ser = df[col].dropna()
        if len(ser) == 0:
            continue
        try:
            converted = pd.to_numeric(ser, errors="coerce")
        except (TypeError, ValueError):
            continue
        if converted.notna().sum() / max(len(ser), 1) >= 0.8:
            candidates.append(col)
    return candidates


def validate(mode: str, csv_path: str, targets: list[str] | None, strict_rdkit: bool) -> dict[str, Any]:
    result: dict[str, Any] = {
        "ok": False,
        "mode": mode,
        "csv_path": csv_path,
        "num_rows": 0,
        "num_columns": 0,
        "columns": [],
        "has_smiles_column": False,
        "smiles_column_name": None,
        "num_blank_smiles": 0,
        "num_invalid_smiles": 0,
        "smiles_check_method": "sampled",
        "smiles_check_count": 0,
        "num_duplicate_smiles": 0,
        "target_columns": [],
        "num_missing_per_target": {},
        "auto_detected_targets": [],
        "errors": [],
        "warnings": [],
    }

    # 1. Read the CSV.
    path = Path(csv_path)
    if not path.is_file():
        result["errors"].append(f"CSV not found: {csv_path}")
        return result
    try:
        df = pd.read_csv(path)
    except pd.errors.EmptyDataError:
        result["errors"].append(f"CSV is empty (no header): {csv_path}")
        return result
    except Exception as exc:  # noqa: BLE001
        result["errors"].append(f"failed to read CSV {csv_path}: {type(exc).__name__}: {exc}")
        return result

    result["num_rows"] = int(len(df))
    result["num_columns"] = int(len(df.columns))
    result["columns"] = [str(c) for c in df.columns]

    # 2. Locate the SMILES column.
    smiles_col = _find_smiles_column(result["columns"])
    if smiles_col is None:
        result["errors"].append(
            f"no column named 'smiles' (case-insensitive) found in CSV. "
            f"Available columns: {result['columns']}"
        )
        return result
    result["has_smiles_column"] = True
    result["smiles_column_name"] = smiles_col
    if smiles_col != CANONICAL_SMILES_COLUMN:
        result["warnings"].append(
            f"SMILES column is named '{smiles_col}' but downstream code expects '{CANONICAL_SMILES_COLUMN}' "
            f"(lowercase). Rename the column to '{CANONICAL_SMILES_COLUMN}' before running the workflow."
        )

    # 3. Blank-SMILES count + duplicate count + RDKit parse check.
    smi_series = df[smiles_col].astype(str).fillna("").str.strip()
    blank_mask = smi_series.eq("") | smi_series.str.lower().eq("nan")
    result["num_blank_smiles"] = int(blank_mask.sum())

    nonblank = smi_series[~blank_mask]
    result["num_duplicate_smiles"] = int(len(nonblank) - nonblank.nunique())

    if len(nonblank) == 0:
        result["errors"].append("no non-blank SMILES found in the CSV")
        return result

    try:
        parsed, invalid, method = _parse_smiles_sample(nonblank.tolist(), full=strict_rdkit)
    except RuntimeError as exc:
        result["errors"].append(str(exc))
        return result
    result["smiles_check_count"] = parsed
    result["num_invalid_smiles"] = invalid
    result["smiles_check_method"] = method

    if invalid > 0:
        scope = "all rows" if method == "full" else f"the {parsed} sampled rows"
        result["errors"].append(
            f"{invalid} out of {parsed} SMILES in {scope} failed to parse with RDKit. "
            "Either pre-clean the CSV with scripts/clean_smiles.py or pass --strict-rdkit to see "
            "the full count."
        )

    # 4. Target-column handling — finetune mode only.
    if mode == "finetune":
        if targets:
            missing = [t for t in targets if t not in df.columns]
            if missing:
                result["errors"].append(
                    f"target column(s) not found in CSV: {missing}. "
                    f"Available columns: {result['columns']}"
                )
            else:
                result["target_columns"] = list(targets)
                for t in targets:
                    nan_count = int(df[t].isna().sum())
                    result["num_missing_per_target"][t] = nan_count
                    # Confirm numeric-ish.
                    nonnan = df[t].dropna()
                    converted = pd.to_numeric(nonnan, errors="coerce")
                    non_numeric_count = int(converted.isna().sum())
                    if non_numeric_count > 0:
                        result["warnings"].append(
                            f"target column '{t}' has {non_numeric_count} non-numeric value(s) "
                            f"that will be dropped by the finetune runner."
                        )
        else:
            # Auto-detect — surface candidates so the skill can prompt the user.
            result["auto_detected_targets"] = _autodetect_target_columns(df, smiles_col)
            if not result["auto_detected_targets"]:
                result["errors"].append(
                    "no numeric non-smiles columns detected. finetune needs at least one target column; "
                    "specify it explicitly via --targets <col>."
                )
            else:
                result["warnings"].append(
                    f"--targets was not specified; auto-detected candidate target columns "
                    f"{result['auto_detected_targets']}. The skill will prompt the user to confirm."
                )

    # 5. Small-corpus warning — only for pretrain (other modes can be tiny by design).
    if mode == "pretrain" and result["num_rows"] < 100:
        result["warnings"].append(
            f"pretrain corpus is only {result['num_rows']} molecule(s). Pretraining typically "
            f"needs orders of magnitude more — verify this is the intended input."
        )

    result["ok"] = not result["errors"]
    return result


def main(argv: list[str] | None = None) -> int:
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Validate a CSV input for a KERMT agent workflow.")
    parser.add_argument("--mode", required=True, choices=["pretrain", "finetune", "inference", "embed"])
    parser.add_argument("--csv", required=True, help="Path to the input CSV")
    parser.add_argument("--targets", nargs="+", default=None,
                        help="(finetune only) target column names. If omitted, the validator auto-detects "
                             "numeric non-smiles columns and reports them as candidates.")
    parser.add_argument("--strict-rdkit", action="store_true",
                        help="Parse every SMILES with RDKit rather than sampling (slow on large CSVs).")
    args = parser.parse_args(argv)

    try:
        result = validate(args.mode, args.csv, args.targets, args.strict_rdkit)
    except Exception as exc:  # noqa: BLE001
        print(traceback.format_exc(), file=sys.stderr)
        print(json.dumps({
            "ok": False,
            "mode": args.mode,
            "csv_path": args.csv,
            "errors": [f"unhandled exception in validator: {type(exc).__name__}: {exc}"],
            "warnings": [],
        }, indent=2))
        return 1

    print(json.dumps(result, indent=2))
    return 0 if result["ok"] else 1


if __name__ == "__main__":
    sys.exit(main())

Requirements and compatibility

Written for: Claude Code, OpenAI Codex

Works with: Claude Code, Claude apps, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Goose, Amp, Roo Code, JetBrains Junie, Factory Droid, Devin (ex-Windsurf), Mistral Vibe, OpenHands, Letta

“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.

Needs: Needs Python

The author says: Requires docker, nvidia-container-toolkit, and a CUDA-capable NVIDIA GPU. Designed for Claude Code, Codex, and Nemotron.

Security

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This skill includes scripts that your agent may run. Read them before you use it.

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Attribution and licence

Published by
NVIDIA
Publisher
NVIDIA (Official)
Source
NVIDIA/skills · skills/bionemo-kermt-pretrain-scratch · commit fce3cca
Licence
Apache License 2.0 (redistribution allowed)
  • LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from LICENSE-APACHE)
  • ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)
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