Tao Run On Brev

NVIDIAOfficialCreated by NVIDIA Corporation

Skill
Tool integration
Cloud and DevOps
Apache-2.0
Medium risk

From the author

Run a TAO training/evaluation/inference container on an NVIDIA Brev GPU instance. Instance provisioning (create/search/stop/delete/login) is delegated to the official brev-cli agent skill or the Brev MCP server; this skill covers only the TAO-specific part — running the container over `brev exec` via the four-verb docker contract. Trigger phrases include "run on Brev", "Brev GPU instance", "TAO on Brev", "submit job to Brev".

— the description by NVIDIA Corporation

AutoGineer summary

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

This skill provides the bridge between NVIDIA TAO Toolkit workflows and NVIDIA Brev GPU instances. It acts as a specialized execution layer that uses the brev CLI to run TAO container operations. By leveraging the four-verb docker contract, it allows users to submit, monitor, and manage TAO jobs on remote GPU hardware. It is designed to work in tandem with official Brev provisioning skills, focusing strictly on the container execution lifecycle once an instance is ready.

What it does

Executes TAO Toolkit containers on remote NVIDIA Brev GPU instances via brev exec.
Manages the lifecycle of TAO jobs including submission, status checking, and cancellation.
Handles secure NGC authentication on remote instances using stdin piping to avoid credential exposure.
Supports pre-pulling of container images to optimize GPU billing time.
Integrates with TAO job recording systems to track job state and backend references.
Supports single-node multi-GPU configurations for training and inference.

When to use it

When you need to run TAO Toolkit training or inference tasks on on-demand GPU hardware.
When you have already provisioned a Brev instance and need to deploy a TAO container to it.
When you want to automate the execution of TAO jobs across ephemeral cloud GPU resources.
When you need to manage containerized TAO workloads while maintaining strict security for NGC credentials.

Advantages

Separates instance management from container execution for modularity.
Prevents credential leakage by avoiding command-line arguments for sensitive keys.
Optimizes cloud costs by separating image pulling from GPU-intensive job execution.
Provides a consistent interface for TAO jobs across different infrastructure backends.

Usage examples

“Run my TAO training job on the existing Brev instance named gpu-node-01.”: The agent will verify the instance readiness, authenticate with NGC, pull the required TAO image, and initiate the training container using the specified job parameters.
“Check the status of my TAO job on Brev.”: The agent will query the remote instance using docker inspect to report the current state of the containerized job.

Install

Download the skill as a ZIP:
https://autogineer.com/agent-skills/nvidia/tao-run-on-brev/download

Unzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:

mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip tao-run-on-brev.zip -d .agents/skills

Documentation by NVIDIA Corporation

Brev — TAO execution glue

Standalone install? If this session was not initialized by the TAO skill bank plugin, run the tao-setup skill first (host preflight, credentials, cross-skill discovery).

NVIDIA Brev provides on-demand GPU instances (pre-loaded with NVIDIA drivers, CUDA, Docker, and the NVIDIA Container Toolkit). Brev is instance-based: you provision an instance, run commands on it over brev exec, and delete it when done.

This skill is deliberately thin. Provisioning and managing instances — create, search by GPU/price, start/stop, delete, login — is owned by NVIDIA Brev's own agent skill, not duplicated here. This skill covers only the TAO-specific part: running a TAO container on a reached instance through the four-verb docker contract, deferring the container-how to tao-run-on-docker over brev exec.

Provisioning: use the official Brev skill or MCP

NVIDIA Brev publishes an agent skill that manages instances in natural language ("create an A100 instance", "search for GPUs under $3/hr", "stop all my instances"). Install it once — it self-registers into your agent's skills dir and is discovered at runtime:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brevdev/brev-cli/main/scripts/install-agent-skill.sh | bash
# installs to ~/.claude/skills/brev-cli/ , ~/.codex/skills/brev-cli/ , ~/.agents/skills/brev-cli/

Or connect the Brev MCP server (https://docs.nvidia.com/brev/_mcp/server). Either one owns login/auth quirks, placement IDs, GPU search, and teardown flags. It does not cover container execution on the instance — that is this skill.

Preflight for this skill: the brev CLI is on PATH and logged in (headless: brev login --token "$BREV_API_TOKEN" before any other call), and you can reach a target instance — poll with a two-word command until it succeeds before issuing real work (a fresh instance reports RUNNING before sshd is up):

for i in $(seq 1 60); do brev exec <instance> "echo ok" 2>/dev/null | grep -qx ok && break; sleep 5; done
brev exec <instance> "echo ok" 2>/dev/null | grep -qx ok || { echo "instance not exec-ready"; exit 1; }

The probe must be two words, quoted as one argument. A single-token probe (brev exec <instance> -- true) passes even when every real command is broken, because brev exec [instance...] <command> treats only the LAST positional as the command — so a lone true lands in the right slot by accident while docker run ... does not. See brev exec argument form below.

Allow ≥ 600 s for the first brev exec on a new instance (SSH bring-up + first container pull); a 60–120 s wrapper timeout truncates startup and looks like a spurious exec failed.

Storage

No shared NFS/Lustre — storage tier B/C via tao-data-io: stage inputs from S3 to the instance's local disk (or fetch in-container) and upload results to S3 before deleting the instance. Instance-local ~/ persists across stop/start but not across delete/create, so the results upload must precede teardown.

Execution — the four verbs (a compound over Docker)

Brev is a compound consumer: submit reaches an instance, then defers the container-how to the four docker verbs (tao-run-on-docker) run over brev exec. It is not a symmetric peer — teardown must additionally delete the instance to stop billing. $BANK = ${TAO_SKILL_BANK_PATH}.

submit — reach an instance (provision/reuse via the official Brev skill or MCP; reuse an existing instance by its instance_id; wait for readiness, above). Lint the assembled command, open the record to mint $JOB_ID before launch, then run the docker submit verb inside the instance and mark RUNNING:

redact_secrets.py lint <<<"$REMOTE_CMD"     # no inline secrets; creds as -e VAR
JOB_ID=$("$BANK/scripts/tao_job_record.py" open \
  --platform brev --image "$IMG" \
  --network-arch "$ARCH" --action "$ACTION" \
  --storage-tier "$TIER" --results-root "$RESULTS_ROOT")
brev exec <instance> "docker inspect '$JOB_ID' >/dev/null 2>&1 && { echo '$JOB_ID already submitted'; exit 0; }; docker run -d --name '$JOB_ID' --label 'tao-job=$JOB_ID' ..."
"$BANK/scripts/tao_job_record.py" mark "$JOB_ID" --state RUNNING \
  --backend-ref "<instance>/$JOB_ID"       # instance is part of the ref: the
                                           # container is unreachable without it

status / logs — brev exec <instance> "docker inspect $JOB_ID" / brev exec <instance> "docker logs $JOB_ID", mapped to the vocab exactly as the docker verbs do. Recover <instance> from the record's backend-ref.

cancel / teardown — remove the container, then for an ephemeral instance delete it (stops billing), then mark the record. Never leave an ephemeral instance running:

brev exec <instance> "docker rm -f $JOB_ID"
brev delete <instance>                      # ephemeral instances only
"$BANK/scripts/tao_job_record.py" mark "$JOB_ID" --state CANCELED --source agent

`brev exec` argument form

The remote command is one argument. The CLI signature is brev exec [instance...] <command>: every positional except the last is an instance name, and -- only ends flag parsing — it does not group the words after it. So brev exec <inst> -- docker inspect "$JOB_ID" is read as instances <inst> docker inspect plus command "$JOB_ID", and fails with could not look up instance "docker" / ssh: illegal option -- - (exit 255) — an error that reads like an instance or SSH fault but is a syntax fault. Quote every remote command as a single string, exactly as brev exec --help shows.

NGC auth once per instance — never put NGC_KEY on argv (it lands in the remote process table); pipe it to --password-stdin:

IMG=nvcr.io/nvidia/tao/tao-toolkit:7.3.0-pyt  # versions-key: images.tao_toolkit.pyt

# NGC auth (one-time per instance) — value never on argv.
# Single-quoted locally so $NGC_KEY expands in the instance's shell; export it
# there first (or pipe it in from the local shell, if the instance has no copy).
brev exec <instance> 'printf %s "$NGC_KEY" | docker login nvcr.io -u "$oauthtoken" --password-stdin'

# Verify auth without reading ~/.docker/config.json. Failure before a successful
# login = not authenticated; failure after = the key's org lacks entitlement.
brev exec <instance> "docker manifest inspect $IMG >/dev/null && echo AUTH_OK || echo AUTH_FAIL"

# Pull BEFORE the GPU run. `docker run` would pull implicitly, but the instance
# bills from boot, so a multi-GB first-time TAO pull is billed GPU-idle time.
# Pulling as its own step also separates a pull failure (auth/entitlement) from
# a training failure in the logs.
brev exec <instance> "docker image inspect $IMG >/dev/null 2>&1 || docker pull $IMG"

# Run a TAO job (the docker `submit` verb, over brev exec)
brev exec <instance> "docker inspect '$JOB_ID' >/dev/null 2>&1 && { echo '$JOB_ID already submitted'; exit 0; }; docker run -d --name '$JOB_ID' --label 'tao-job=$JOB_ID' --gpus all -v ~/data:/data -e NGC_KEY '$IMG' visual_changenet train -e /data/spec.yaml"

Multi-GPU and multi-node

Multi-node is not supported on Brev — instance-based, no cross-instance coordination. Multi-GPU on a single instance is supported (up to 8× H100 / A100 / L40S); torchrun --nproc-per-node=N or PyTorch DDP work within the instance.

Files

ATTRIBUTION.mdAdded by AutoGineer915 B
BENCHMARK.md6.9 KiB
LICENSELicence file added by AutoGineer11.2 KiB
SKILL.md8.1 KiB
config/skillspector-baseline.yaml1.2 KiB
evals/evals.json771 B
references/skill_info.yaml439 B
skill-card.md4.5 KiB
skill.oms.sig5.0 KiB

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Requirements and compatibility

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: Declares allowed tools, Needs an MCP server, Needs network access, Needs Node.js

The author says: Requires the brev CLI (https://github.com/brevdev/brev-cli) and an active brev login. Instance provisioning is handled by the official brev-cli agent skill or the Brev MCP server.

Security

What our scanner noticed· Medium risk

Large base64-encoded blobs
References to credential files
Instructions that use the network
Downloads piped into a shell

A static scan is not a guarantee. Skills are third-party content: review a skill before you let an agent use it.

Attribution and licence

Created by

NVIDIA Corporation

Publisher

NVIDIA (Official)

Source

NVIDIA/skills · skills/tao-run-on-brev · commit fce3cca

Licence

Apache License 2.0 (redistribution allowed)

LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from LICENSE-APACHE)
ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)

Synced

2026-11-09

AutoGineer is not affiliated with or endorsed by NVIDIA Corporation or NVIDIA.

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The ZIP holds the skill’s files, its licence files and an ATTRIBUTION.md. Download tao-run-on-brev.zip