Retail Assistant

This example was built by HPE AI & Data Technical consultants: Paula Serna and Sergio Donís; and is presented as-is. See credits for contact information.

This NemoClaw demo provides an AI-powered retail management assistant that lets store employees interact with company data through natural conversation - no dashboards, no SQL, no training required. Users connect via Telegram and ask questions or trigger operations naturally: check inventory, request stock transfers, query sales trends.

Built on the NVIDIA NemoClaw open-source agentic framework, the assistant is shaped by a custom identity layer (AGENTS.md · SOUL.md · USER.md) and a retail-specific skill set. All operations run inside a sandboxed environment. Authentication is Telegram-native: each user is automatically mapped to their role and store via the TelegramAuth table - no passwords involved.

Deployment Approaches

Approach	Path	Best for
Docker Compose	`docker-compose/`	Single-machine demo, local development
Helm (Kubernetes)	`helm/`	Production-grade, multi-node K8s cluster

Each approach has its own README with deployment-specific instructions. This file covers everything common to both.

Architecture

The diagram below shows the Docker Compose deployment. The Helm/Kubernetes deployment follows the same logical flow but replaces Docker socket management with K8s sidecars and service DNS.

graph TD
    TG["📱 Telegram\n(user messages)"]

    subgraph HOST["🐳  Docker Compose Host"]
        direction TB

        subgraph WS["workspace  (ubuntu:24.04)"]
            direction TB
            STARTUP["startup.sh"]
            SOCAT["socat :8000 → vLLM\nsocat :8001 → API"]

            subgraph SB["🔒  OpenShell Sandbox  (Docker container)"]
                direction TB
                AGENT["NemoClaw agent\n─────────────\nTelegram poller\nretail-api CLI\nPython TCP relay\n10.200.0.1:8001 → API\n─────────────\nIdentity: AGENTS · SOUL · USER\nSkill:    retail-api SKILL.md"]
            end

            STARTUP --> SOCAT
            STARTUP --> SB
        end

        API["Retail API\n─────────────\nFastAPI · JWT\nRBAC · :8002"]
        DB["PostgreSQL\n─────────────\nRBAC · RLS\n:5432"]
        SEED["db_seed\n(one-shot init)"]

        SEED --> DB
    end

    VLLM["🖥️  vLLM / NIM\n(external GPU)"]

    TG -- "message" --> SB
    SB -- "response" --> TG
    SB -- "HTTP :8001" --> API
    API -- "SQL + role" --> DB
    SOCAT --> VLLM

    style HOST fill:#f0fdf9,stroke:#00b09b,stroke-width:2px,color:#111
    style WS   fill:#e8f5e9,stroke:#00b09b,stroke-width:1.5px,color:#111
    style SB   fill:#1a237e,stroke:#3949ab,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff
    style AGENT fill:#283593,stroke:#5c6bc0,stroke-width:1px,color:#fff
    style API  fill:#7b1fa2,stroke:#9c27b0,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff
    style DB   fill:#1a237e,stroke:#3949ab,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff
    style SEED fill:#f5f5f5,stroke:#bbb,stroke-width:1px,color:#555
    style VLLM fill:#1a1a2e,stroke:#76b900,stroke-width:2px,color:#76b900
    style TG   fill:#29b6f6,stroke:#0288d1,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff
    style STARTUP fill:#e8f5e9,stroke:#00b09b,stroke-width:1px,color:#333
    style SOCAT fill:#e8f5e9,stroke:#00b09b,stroke-width:1px,color:#333

In both deployments, the agent runs inside an OpenShell sandbox — an isolated runtime that provides a restricted network, restricted file access, and other isolations. Exec-tool child processes can only reach 10.200.0.1 (veth bridge), which is why a Python TCP relay forwards API calls from inside the sandbox to the workspace's socat proxy.

Prerequisites

A Telegram bot token and your Telegram user ID (see Getting Your Telegram Credentials)
A deployed LLM with tool calling support (see LLM Inference Endpoint)
Docker (Compose approach) or a Kubernetes cluster with Helm (K8s approach)

Identity Layer

Both deployment approaches share the same identity files that define the agent's behaviour:

File	Purpose
`identity/AGENTS.md`	Tone, response format, and presentation rules. Defines how the agent communicates — never Markdown tables, bullet lists, 4000 char limit.
`identity/SOUL.md`	Auth enforcement, RBAC rules, tool usage restrictions, schema facts, security boundaries. The agent's security contract.
`identity/USER.md`	Runtime user context. Derives the user's name from their email, detects language, scopes operations to their store by default.
`skills/retail-api/SKILL.md`	Retail API skill — lazy-loaded on demand. Contains the full command reference for the retail API CLI.

The startup.sh (both approaches) injects these files into the OpenShell sandbox at deploy time via patch-openclaw.py.

⚠️ Demo workaround - identity verification

In this sandbox, user identity is resolved by mapping a Telegram ID to an employee record in the TelegramAuth table. The agent then trusts that mapping unconditionally for all RBAC decisions.

In a real end-to-end deployment, identity should be verified by an external Identity Provider (IdP). This is a demo workaround.

LLM Inference Endpoint

NemoClaw requires an OpenAI-compatible endpoint with tool calling enabled. Without it the agent cannot call the retail API.

This demo is optimised for NVIDIA Nemotron-3-Super 120B A12B FP8, deployed with vLLM and MTP (Multi Token Prediction) for faster inference, in 2 H200 GPUs:

docker run --gpus '"device=1,2"' --name nemotron-super -p 8070:8000 --ipc=host \
  -v ~/.cache/huggingface:/root/.cache/huggingface \
  -e HF_TOKEN=$HF_TOKEN \
  -e VLLM_FLASHINFER_MOE_BACKEND=latency \
  -e VLLM_USE_FLASHINFER_MOE_FP8=1 \
  vllm/vllm-openai:latest \
  --model nvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Super-120B-A12B-FP8 \
  --trust-remote-code \
  --dtype auto \
  --kv-cache-dtype fp8 \
  --tensor-parallel-size 2 \
  --enable-expert-parallel \
  --enable-prefix-caching \
  --gpu-memory-utilization 0.85 \
  --max-model-len 131072 \
  --enable-chunked-prefill \
  --max-num-batched-tokens 16384 \
  --max-cudagraph-capture-size 1024 \
  --mamba-ssm-cache-dtype float32 \
  --default-chat-template-kwargs '{"enable_thinking": false}' \
  --enable-auto-tool-choice \
  --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder \
  --speculative-config '{"method": "nemotron_h_mtp", "num_speculative_tokens": 3}'

Once running, set your .env accordingly:

OPENAI_BASE_URL=http://<host>:8000/v1
NEMOCLAW_MODEL=nvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Super-120B-A12B-FP8

Optimize Your Model

Three parameters in .env let you tune inference behaviour without touching the code:

1. Limit `OPENCLAW_MAX_TOKENS`

OPENCLAW_MAX_TOKENS=4096

NemoClaw responses are short by nature - a retail query answer rarely exceeds a few hundred tokens. The smaller this value, the faster the model stops generating and returns a response. Start at 4096 and only increase if you see responses getting cut off. The value (8192) is a safe ceiling for complex multi-table queries.

2. Disable reasoning if your model supports it

Models with built-in reasoning (chain-of-thought, thinking tokens) will overthink simple retail queries — adding latency without improving accuracy. If your model supports a enable_thinking flag, disable it at the vLLM level:

--default-chat-template-kwargs '{"enable_thinking": false}'

This is already included in the Nemotron-Super launch command above. For other models, check the model card for the equivalent flag. Disabling reasoning is one of the highest-impact latency optimisations for agentic retail workloads.

Getting Your Telegram Credentials

1. Create a Telegram Bot

Search for @BotFather in Telegram
Send /newbot and follow the prompts
Copy the bot token — looks like 123456789:ABCdefGHIjklMNOpqrsTUVwxyz

2. Get Telegram User IDs

Search for @userinfobot in Telegram
Send /start — it replies with your numeric user ID

TELEGRAM_USER_ID accepts a comma-separated list for multiple users (e.g. 123456789,987654321). Each user must also have a row in the TelegramAuth database table (seeded from synthetic_data/csv/TelegramAuth.csv).

Adding a User

Two steps are always required. An optional third step applies when the person has no employee record yet.

Step 1 — Whitelist the Telegram ID

Add the numeric Telegram ID to the allowed user list in your deployment config (.env for Docker Compose, values.yaml for Helm).

Step 2 — Map the Telegram ID to an employee

Add a row to TelegramAuth.csv (Docker Compose: synthetic_data/csv/TelegramAuth.csv / Helm: files/csv/TelegramAuth.csv):

telegram_id,employee_id
NEW_TELEGRAM_ID,<employee_id>

The employee_id must match a record in Employees.csv. This determines the user's role (country_manager, store_manager, or data_analyst) and, for store managers, their store_id scope.

Step 3 (optional) — Create the employee record

If the person does not have an existing employee record, add a row to Employees.csv first:

employee_id,first_name,last_name,role,store_id,email
<next_id>,First,Last,<role>,<store_id or blank>,first.last@retaildemo.com

Valid roles: country_manager, store_manager, data_analyst.
Leave store_id blank for country_manager and data_analyst.

⚠️ After editing CSVs you must fully redeploy to reseed the database. See the deployment-specific README for the exact command — do not skip the volume wipe step or the new user will not be inserted.

Database

PostgreSQL with three roles enforced at the database level via Row Level Security:

nemoclaw_country_manager — full read/write across all stores
nemoclaw_store_manager — read across all stores; write only to own store. RLS on InventoryTransfers and ReorderRequests blocks cross-store writes at DB level.
nemoclaw_data_analyst — read-only across all stores

Authentication is Telegram-native: the TelegramAuth table maps Telegram user IDs to employee records. No passwords are passed through the agent.

Pre-built views available for common queries: InventoryAvailable, LowStockAlerts, Customer360, SalesPerformanceByStore, TopProductsByRevenue, ActivePromotions.

Credits

This contribution was done by the HPE AI Services members:

Paula Serna. HPE AI & Data Technical Consultant.
Sergio Donis. HPE AI & Data Technical Consultant.