NemoClaw is NVIDIA's agent sandbox that lets you run AI assistants locally using your own inference backend — Ollama, llama.cpp, or cloud providers. It bundles OpenShell as a gateway and OpenClaw as the agent runtime, all orchestrated through Docker containers.

Here's a walkthrough of setting it up from scratch.

Setup …

Ollama is a lightweight, open-source LLM runner. Its :cloud model suffix lets you route prompts to free-tier hosted models — no GPU, no paid API key required. Useful for learning, prototyping, and small projects on modest hardware.

This post covers the full Ubuntu setup: manual install, service startup, chatting with Kimi …