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Contributing

This repository is a catalog of NVIDIA-verified agent skills. Skills are maintained by each product team in their own repos.

To contribute to a skill or propose a new one, use the contributing guidelines in the relevant source repo. See the Skill Catalog and Getting Help & Contributing sections in the README for links.

For changes to the catalog itself (fixing links, adding a new product listing), open a pull request. For catalog-level bug reports, feature proposals, or documentation problems, file an issue using one of the catalog issue templates (Bug Report, Feature Request, Documentation Request or Correction). Questions and general discussion belong in Discussions; security vulnerabilities follow the disclosure process in SECURITY.md.

Recommended Skill Directory Path

When publishing skills in a product repo, keep the source of truth in skills/ at the repo root. This is the recommended default for product-owned or OSS skills, where skills are a first-class artifact.

Use .agents/skills/ for installed skills that agents discover at runtime, or for repos that are intentionally structured as agent-readable skills packs.

Avoid agent-specific paths in the repo (.claude/skills/, .codex/skills/, .cursor/skills/) for new entries — they create duplication. Existing products on those paths can keep them; components.d/<slug>.yml handles per-repo paths via the skills[].path field.

At install time, your tooling or packaging can copy or symlink from skills/ into the appropriate agent discovery locations (for example .agents/skills/, .claude/skills/, .codex/skills/) as required by each tool.

Discoverability Checklist (Source Repos)

GitHub search ranks repositories on metadata and engagement, not just content. Before (or right after) onboarding your skills to the catalog, check your source repo:

  • Repo description names what developers search for: the product, the workflow, and "agent skills" (for example, "Agent skills for video search and summarization with VLMs and RAG"), not just the product name.
  • GitHub topics are set (Settings → edit topics): include agent-skills plus your domain terms (robotics, video-understanding, synthetic-data, ...). Repos with no topics do not surface in topic browsing or filtered search.
  • README opens with a two-sentence value proposition using those same search terms, before badges or tables of contents.
  • License is detected by GitHub: the repo sidebar should show your license name. If it shows "Other" or "View license", GitHub could not parse your license file and the repo is excluded from license-filtered searches.
  • Social preview image is set (Settings → Social preview, 1280×640) so shared links render a card instead of a blank tile.

These apply to the source repo; the catalog repo's own metadata is maintained by the catalog team.

License

Skills published to github.com/nvidia/skills are licensed under one of:

  • Apache 2.0
  • CC-BY 4.0
  • Dual (Apache 2.0 + CC-BY 4.0)

Contributors confirm three things per onboarding PR:

  1. The skills have been cleared for open source release by the owning team.
  2. The skill is licensed under Apache 2.0, CC-BY 4.0, or dual-license (Apache 2.0 + CC-BY 4.0).
  3. No new license or new third-party component has been introduced beyond what the source repo already carries.

The pull request template prompts for these affirmations on every onboarding PR.

Signing Your Work

  • We require that all contributors "sign-off" on their commits. This certifies that the contribution is your original work, or you have rights to submit it under the same license, or a compatible license.

    • Any contribution which contains commits that are not Signed-Off will not be accepted.

  • To sign off on a commit you simply use the --signoff (or -s) option when committing your changes:

    git commit -s -m "Add cool feature."

    This will append the following to your commit message:

    Signed-off-by: Your Name <your@email.com>

  • If you forgot to sign off on earlier commits, retroactively sign all commits in your branch with:

    git rebase --signoff origin/main && git push --force-with-lease

  • Full text of the DCO (https://developercertificate.org/):

    Developer Certificate of Origin
Version 1.1

Copyright (C) 2004, 2006 The Linux Foundation and its contributors.

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
license document, but changing it is not allowed.


Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1

By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:

(a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
    have the right to submit it under the open source license
    indicated in the file; or

(b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
    of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
    license and I have the right under that license to submit that
    work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
    by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
    permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
    in the file; or

(c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
    person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
    it.

(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
    are public and that a record of the contribution (including all
    personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
    maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
    this project or the open source license(s) involved.