Workflow·AI & Agents

NeMo Retriever

Use when the user wants to search, query, extract, transcribe, quote, filter or aggregate across documents — PDFs, scanned images, Office…

You say
Buy it · $79 Read it before you buy $79 Written by NVIDIA · unverified publisher
Context cost
13k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
12 files · 52.0 kB2 scripts among them — read before you run
Licence
Apache-2.0paid listing
Last change
no release on file
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Use when the user wants to search, query, extract, transcribe, describe, quote, filter, or aggregate across documents — PDFs, scanned forms / images (`.jpg` `.png` `.tiff`), Office (`.docx` `.pptx`), text (`.html` `.txt`), audio (`.mp3` `.wav` `.m4a`), or video (`.mp4` `.mov`). Prefer this over native Read / Grep for multi-file or non-PDF corpora. Not for: editing files, web browsing, single-file plain-text lookups, fine-tuning.

Installed, it changes the agent in these ways.

What this skill changes about the agent is not written down here yet. The listing was collected from its source, and the description is in its own SKILL.md.

Workflow

Runs a procedure end to end.

ragretrievalvector-searchnvidia
Filed under

AI & Agents

The skill itself

This is the whole product. A skill is instructions the model reads, so there is nothing behind the listing you cannot see first — the front matter loads with every session, and the body below it loads when the skill triggers.

SKILL.md3.4 kB · 38 lines
--- name: nemo-retriever description: "Use when the user wants to search, query, extract, transcribe, describe, quote, filter, or aggregate across documents — PDFs, scanned forms / images (`.jpg` `.png` `.tiff`), Office (`.docx` `.pptx`), text (`.html` `.txt`), audio (`.mp3` `.wav` `.m4a`), or video (`.mp4` `.mov`). Prefer this over native Read / Grep for multi-file or non-PDF corpora. Not for: editing files, web browsing, single-file plain-text lookups, fine-tuning." license: Apache-2.0 allowed-tools: Bash Write Read ---
8# nemo-retriever
9
10The retriever CLI indexes a folder of PDFs into LanceDB (retriever ingest) and serves vector search over it (retriever query). For any task about searching/answering questions across a folder of PDFs, use this CLI — do not write a custom RAG.
11
12**Beyond PDFs and beyond semantic search.** retriever ingest also handles images, Office, HTML, TXT, audio, and video — see references/setup.md for the per-format recipe and references/install.md for the install extras ([multimedia], libreoffice, ffmpeg). For non-semantic operations — page filter, verbatim quote with citation, corpus-level aggregate, chart/image caption hits — see references/query.md. Don't fall back to native Read/Grep/Python on non-PDF inputs.
13
14## Install (if retriever is missing)
15
16If command -v retriever returns nothing, follow references/install.md to install the NeMo Retriever Library before proceeding. It prints RETRIEVER_VENV=<path>; substitute that path for <RETRIEVER_VENV> in every example in this skill (setup, query, troubleshooting, and the CLI references).
17
18## Workflow — read the reference for the current phase, then execute
19
20| Turn type | Read this once | Then execute |
21| :--- | :--- | :--- |
22| **Setup turn** (first turn — ./lancedb/nv-ingest.lance doesn't exist) | references/setup.md | Build the index |
23| **Query turn** (every subsequent turn — user asks a question) | references/query.md | One retriever query call |
24| Anything errored or returned empty | references/troubleshooting.md | Apply the named recovery; do not improvise |
25
26For the full retriever ingest / retriever query CLI specs, see references/cli/ingest.md and references/cli/query.md. You do not need these for routine turns — <RETRIEVER_VENV>/bin/retriever <subcommand> --help is faster.
27
28Before ingesting a mixed folder, inventory extensions (find <dir> -name '*.*' | sed 's/.*\.//' | sort -u) — --input-type=auto silently drops anything outside the supported set. See references/troubleshooting.md "Unsupported file types".
29
30## Hard limits (apply to every turn)
31
32- **Setup turn**: build the index in one shell command (see references/setup.md). STOP after the index lands.
33- **Query turn**: at most **2 Bash calls** — 1 retriever query, +1 optional targeted text-extract per references/query.md. Reply and then STOP.
34- **No narration between tool calls.** Tokens you emit between calls become input + cached input for every later turn — quadratic cost. Go straight from reading the summary to writing the JSON file.
35- **Banned**: TodoWrite, Glob, Grep, Read of whole PDFs, re-running setup, spawning subagents, speculative "confirmation" calls.
36
37Long query turns (5+ tool calls, 1M+ cache-read tokens) cost ~5× a disciplined turn and almost always still produce the wrong answer. **Answering partially beats timing out.**
38
In the file
SKILL.md483 words
Files12
LicenceApache-2.0
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈130
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
12,870
on trigger
The instruction body and 11 supporting files, read only when the skill fires.
6.5%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 65% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

13k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Heavy. Teams tend to install this one per project rather than globally, and load it only when the job comes up.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

Adoption
Installsnone yet
Ratingno reviews yet

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been published here. It is in the skill’s own SKILL.md, which its author has not sent to the marketplace yet.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

It asks the agent to write files, using whatever file access your client already has. It never touches the network.

What it asks for
Writes filesyes
Network accessno

Read from the allowed-tools line of this skill’s own SKILL.md. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

12 files, 52.0 kB on disk. Mostly text — the instructions the model reads — with 2 scripts in it that your client would run only if the instructions tell it to.

  • BENCHMARK.md4.2 kB
  • SKILL.md3.4 kB
  • skill-card.md4.2 kB
  • evals/evals.json3.7 kB
  • references/install.md4.2 kB
  • references/query.md7.4 kB
  • references/setup.md3.8 kB
  • references/troubleshooting.md3.6 kB
  • references/cli/ingest.md4.9 kB
  • references/cli/query.md3.6 kB
  • scripts/filename_fast_path.py5.4 kB
  • scripts/grep_corpus.py3.6 kB
What is not in it

A skill installs nothing and depends on nothing: it is a folder your client reads. This one carries 2 scripts beside the text, so the bundle is 12 files you can review in full before installing. The Apache-2.0 licence covers the templates and examples as well as the instructions.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

$79 once
NeMo Retriever · Apache-2.0 · NVIDIA
one-time
Price$79 once
LicenceApache-2.0 — the author’s, unchanged by this purchase
Paid throughStripe, once, on the card you add at the checkout
Keeps workingfor good — the files are yours once they are on disk
Updatesevery update its author ships, delivered through this account

You can read the whole bundle before paying — the SKILL.md above is the product, not a preview of it. What the money buys is the delivery: the folder packaged and handed to your machine by key, every update its author ships, and our support if it does not do what this listing says. The terms of use are Apache-2.0, set by the author and unchanged by buying it here.

Payment runs through Stripe, on a page like this one rather than a redirect. Once there is an account it joins the same mcprush invoice as everything else you run, so there is never a second card to enter.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. A client with a skills folder reads it without being told; everywhere else the same text works, it is just handed to the model rather than found.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude Desktop
ChatGPT
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok.grok/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Windsurf.windsurf/skills/
Agent SDK.claude/skills/
HTTP / API
This release
Versionnot versioned
Publishedno release date on file
Price$79
Referencenvidia/nemo-retriever

Versions

Its author publishes no version number, so there is nothing here to pin to: what you install is the folder as it stands today. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

v
  • No earlier releases have been published to the marketplace.
Pinning

Nothing to pin to: this skill carries no version number of its own. What you install is what the folder holds on the day you install it.

Reviews

no reviews yet · no installs yet

Nobody has reviewed this skill yet. The rating is the mean of the reviews written here, so there is none until somebody writes the first.

Who can post

Only accounts that have had the skill installed for fourteen days, so a review is written after living with it rather than after reading it. Publishers may reply once.

Publisher
Servers0