Deploy NemoClaw to a Remote GPU Instance#

Run NemoClaw on a remote GPU instance through Brev. The preferred path is to provision the VM, run the standard NemoClaw installer on that host, and then run nemoclaw onboard.

Quick Start#

If your Brev instance is already up and has already been onboarded with a sandbox, start with the standard sandbox chat flow:

$ nemoclaw my-assistant connect
$ openclaw tui

This gets you into the sandbox shell first and opens the OpenClaw chat UI right away. If the VM is fresh, run the standard installer on that host and then run nemoclaw onboard before trying nemoclaw my-assistant connect.

If you are connecting from your local machine and still need to provision the remote VM, you can still use nemoclaw deploy <instance-name> as the legacy compatibility path described below.

Prerequisites#

  • The Brev CLI installed and authenticated.

  • A provider credential for the inference backend you want to use during onboarding.

  • NemoClaw installed locally if you plan to use the deprecated nemoclaw deploy wrapper. Otherwise, install NemoClaw directly on the remote host after provisioning it.

Deploy the Instance#

Warning

The nemoclaw deploy command is deprecated. Prefer provisioning the remote host separately, then running the standard NemoClaw installer and nemoclaw onboard on that host.

Create a Brev instance and run the legacy compatibility flow:

$ nemoclaw deploy <instance-name>

Replace <instance-name> with a name for your remote instance, for example my-gpu-box.

The legacy compatibility flow performs the following steps on the VM:

  1. Installs Docker and the NVIDIA Container Toolkit if a GPU is present.

  2. Installs the OpenShell CLI.

  3. Runs nemoclaw onboard (the setup wizard) to create the gateway, register providers, and launch the sandbox.

  4. Starts auxiliary services, such as the Telegram bridge and cloudflared tunnel, when those tools are available.

By default, the compatibility wrapper asks Brev to provision on gcp. Override this with NEMOCLAW_BREV_PROVIDER if you need a different Brev cloud provider.

Connect to the Remote Sandbox#

After deployment finishes, the deploy command opens an interactive shell inside the remote sandbox. To reconnect after closing the session, run the command again:

$ nemoclaw deploy <instance-name>

Monitor the Remote Sandbox#

SSH to the instance and run the OpenShell TUI to monitor activity and approve network requests:

$ ssh <instance-name> 'cd /home/ubuntu/nemoclaw && set -a && . .env && set +a && openshell term'

Verify Inference#

Run a test agent prompt inside the remote sandbox:

$ openclaw agent --agent main --local -m "Hello from the remote sandbox" --session-id test

Remote Dashboard Access#

The NemoClaw dashboard validates the browser origin against an allowlist baked into the sandbox image at build time. By default the allowlist only contains http://127.0.0.1:18789. When accessing the dashboard from a remote browser (for example through a Brev public URL or an SSH port-forward), set CHAT_UI_URL to the origin the browser will use before running setup:

$ export CHAT_UI_URL="https://openclaw0-<id>.brevlab.com"
$ nemoclaw deploy <instance-name>

For SSH port-forwarding, the origin is typically http://127.0.0.1:18789 (the default), so no extra configuration is needed.

Note

On Brev, set CHAT_UI_URL in the launchable environment configuration so it is available when the installer builds the sandbox image. If CHAT_UI_URL is not set on a headless host, the compatibility wrapper prints a warning.

GPU Configuration#

The deploy script uses the NEMOCLAW_GPU environment variable to select the GPU type. The default value is a2-highgpu-1g:nvidia-tesla-a100:1. Set this variable before running nemoclaw deploy to use a different GPU configuration:

$ export NEMOCLAW_GPU="a2-highgpu-1g:nvidia-tesla-a100:2"
$ nemoclaw deploy <instance-name>