Getting Started¶

This document includes installation and configuration instructions for Omni-NLI. For a quickstart, please see the project's main README.md file.

Installation¶

You can run Omni-NLI either by installing it as a Python library or by using a pre-built Docker image.

Python Installation¶

You can install Omni-NLI via pip:

pip install omni-nli

Docker Installation¶

Pre-built Docker images are available from the GitHub Container Registry.

Generic CPU Image:

docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000 ghcr.io/cogitatortech/omni-nli-cpu:latest

GPU Image (CUDA; for NVIDIA GPUs):

docker run --rm -it --gpus all -p 8000:8000 ghcr.io/cogitatortech/omni-nli-cuda:latest

Configuration can be passed as environment variables to the container. For example, to use OpenRouter with a custom model:

docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000 \
  -e DEFAULT_BACKEND=openrouter \
  -e OPENROUTER_API_KEY=your-api-key \
  -e OPENROUTER_DEFAULT_MODEL=openai/gpt-5.2 \
  ghcr.io/cogitatortech/omni-nli-cpu:latest

Tip

When using the HuggingFace backend, the GPU image is recommended because inference will be a lot faster when using a GPU.

Warning

When using the Ollama backend with Docker, you must set OLLAMA_HOST to point to a valid IP or host name that has Ollama server running on it. The default localhost will point to the container itself and will fail to connect.

Note

The latest tag refers to the latest release on top of the main branch. You can replace latest with a specific version tag from the list of available packages.

Configuration¶

The server can be configured using command-line arguments or environment variables. Environment variables are read from a .env file if it exists or from the system environment.

Note

Command-line arguments take precedence over environment variables.

You could copy the example .env.example in the project's repository to the directory where you run the server and customize it.

cp .env.example .env

Configuration Reference¶

Argument	Env Var	Description	Default
`--host`	`HOST`	Server host	`127.0.0.1`
`--port`	`PORT`	Server port	`8000`
`--log-level`	`LOG_LEVEL`	Logging level	`INFO`
`--debug`	`DEBUG`	Enable debug mode	`False`
`--default-backend`	`DEFAULT_BACKEND`	Default backend provider	`huggingface`
`--ollama-host`	`OLLAMA_HOST`	Ollama server URL	`http://localhost:11434`
`--ollama-default-model`	`OLLAMA_DEFAULT_MODEL`	Default Ollama model	`qwen3:8b`
`--huggingface-default-model`	`HUGGINGFACE_DEFAULT_MODEL`	Default HuggingFace model	`microsoft/Phi-3.5-mini-instruct`
`--openrouter-default-model`	`OPENROUTER_DEFAULT_MODEL`	Default OpenRouter model	`openai/gpt-5-mini`
`--huggingface-token`	`HUGGINGFACE_TOKEN`	HuggingFace API token (for gated models)	`None`
`--openrouter-api-key`	`OPENROUTER_API_KEY`	OpenRouter API key	`None`
`--hf-cache-dir`	`HF_CACHE_DIR`	HuggingFace models cache directory	OS default
`--max-thinking-tokens`	`MAX_THINKING_TOKENS`	Max tokens for thinking traces	`4096`
`--return-thinking-trace`	`RETURN_THINKING_TRACE`	Return raw thinking trace in response	`False`

Note

The PROVIDER_CACHE_SIZE setting must be configured via environment variable only, not CLI flag.

Supported Backends¶

Backend	Local	Example Models
Ollama	Yes	`qwen3:8b`, `deepseek-r1:7b`, `phi4:latest`
HuggingFace	Yes	`microsoft/Phi-3.5-mini-instruct`, `Qwen/Qwen2.5-1.5B-Instruct`
OpenRouter	No	`openai/gpt-5-mini`, `openai/gpt-5.2`, `arcee-ai/trinity-large-preview:free`

Running the Server¶

Start the server using the CLI command:

omni-nli

The server will start at http://127.0.0.1:8000 by default.

CLI arguments example:

omni-nli \
  --host 0.0.0.0 \
  --port 8080 \
  --default-backend openrouter \
  --openrouter-default-model openai/gpt-5.2