vss-manage-alerts

name	vss-manage-alerts
description	Use this skill when operating VSS alert workflows — real-time monitoring, Alert-Bridge subscriptions, verification verdicts, on-demand verification, always-on operation, Slack notifications, incident queries, or camera onboarding. Not for non-alert analytics.
license	Apache-2.0
metadata	{"version":"3.3.3","author":"NVIDIA Video Search and Summarization Team","github-url":"https://github.com/NVIDIA-AI-Blueprints/video-search-and-summarization","tags":"nvidia blueprint operational","vss-requires":"alerts"}

Purpose

Operate the VSS alert pipeline (mode detection, Alert-Bridge subscriptions, verification verdicts, on-demand verification, always-on operation, Slack notifications, queries, camera onboarding, verifier-prompt customization).

Prerequisites

• Active VSS alerts profile reachable either on Docker ($HOST_IP:9080 Alert Bridge) or through the public Ingress (VSS_PUBLIC_URL with /alert-bridge).
• Follow ../vss-build-vision-ai/references/deployment_resolution.md for the shared VSS_PUBLIC_URL contract.
• curl and jq on the agent host. Docker Compose mode detection may use docker / generated.env; Kubernetes must not.

Instructions

Follow the routing tables and step-by-step workflows below. Each section that ends in workflow, quick start, or flow is intended to be executed top-to-bottom. Detailed reference material lives in references/ and helper scripts live in scripts/ — call them via run_script when the skill points to a script by name.

Examples

Runnable end-to-end scenarios live under evals/ (each *.json manifest); inline curl blocks appear in each workflow below. Replay with nv-base validate <this-skill-dir> --agent-eval.

Limitations

Requires the matching VSS profile/microservice deployed and reachable. NGC-hosted models/NIMs are subject to rate-limits, GPU-memory needs, and license terms; concurrency and storage limits depend on host hardware and the profile's compose file.

Troubleshooting

• Connection refused → microservice not running: probe /docs or /health, redeploy via vss-build-vision-ai.
• HTTP 401/403 on NGC pulls → missing/expired NGC_CLI_API_KEY: docker login nvcr.io and re-export the key.
• OOM / model load failure → insufficient GPU memory: use a smaller variant or docker compose down to free GPUs.

VSS Alert Management

The alerts profile runs in one of two modes (chosen at the /vss-build-vision-ai stock Alerts workflow in verification or real-time mode) — see The Two Modes table below. This skill routes by deployed mode + user intent (monitoring vs subscription CRUD vs Slack webhook), driving the Alert Bridge REST API directly (no VSS Agent /generate).

When to Use

• Start/stop a real-time alert on a sensor ("Start real-time alert for boxes dropped on warehouse_sample")
• Create/list/stop realtime subscription rules on Alert Bridge
• Set up or manage Slack incident notifications
• List or query detected incidents / alerts (Workflow C)
• Inspect CV verification results and verdicts (confirmed/rejected/not-confirmed/verification-failed), explain how verification works, customize VLM-verifier prompts (CV mode — Workflow B)
• Run a one-shot on-demand verification of a specific video/image URL (CV mode — Workflow F)
• Check whether always-on alerting is active, query its incidents, troubleshoot missing always-on alerts (VLM real-time — Workflow G; operate only, no config authoring)
• Add a new camera to the alerts pipeline (Workflow A)

---

Deployment prerequisite

Requires the VSS alerts profile in either verification (CV) or real-time (VLM) mode. Resolve endpoints once before probing. See ../vss-build-vision-ai/references/deployment_resolution.md.

# Prefer VSS_PUBLIC_URL; accept legacy VSS_ENDPOINT as the same public origin.
if [ -z "${VSS_PUBLIC_URL:-}" ] && [ -n "${VSS_ENDPOINT:-}" ]; then
  VSS_PUBLIC_URL="${VSS_ENDPOINT}"
fi

if [ -n "${VSS_PUBLIC_URL:-}" ]; then
  DEPLOYMENT_KIND="kubernetes"
  VSS_PUBLIC_URL="${VSS_PUBLIC_URL%/}"
  # Force public prefixes — ignore leftover Docker AB / VST / VA_MCP host ports.
  AB="${VSS_PUBLIC_URL}/alert-bridge"
  VA_MCP_URL="${VSS_PUBLIC_URL}/va-mcp"
else
  DEPLOYMENT_KIND="docker"
  : "${HOST_IP:?Set HOST_IP for Docker Compose or VSS_PUBLIC_URL for Kubernetes}"
  AB="http://${HOST_IP}:9080"
  VA_MCP_URL="http://${HOST_IP}:9901"
fi

On Kubernetes, do not use kubectl port-forward, Service DNS, NodePorts, docker exec, docker inspect, or docker ps. Probe Alert Bridge with curl -sf --max-time 5 "$AB/health" (/health, not /api/v1/health).

# Reachability — either mode. Alert Bridge must answer before operate work.
curl -sf --max-time 5 "$AB/health" >/dev/null

Optional Docker-only peer check (skipped on Kubernetes — RT-VLM is not on alerts Ingress):

if [ "${DEPLOYMENT_KIND:-docker}" != "kubernetes" ]; then
  curl -sf --max-time 5 "http://${HOST_IP}:8000/docs" >/dev/null \
    && docker ps --format '{{.Names}}' \
       | grep -qE '^(vss-rtvi-cv|vss-rtvi-vlm)$'
fi

If the Alert Bridge probe fails, ask which mode to deploy and hand off to the /vss-build-vision-ai stock Alerts workflow in the matching mode (decline → stop; pre-authorized autonomous deploy → run directly with verification by default). If it passes, detect the mode per Step 1.

---

The Two Modes (Deploy-Time Choice)

Mode	Deploy flag	Env (.env)	What runs	What is available
CV (verification)	-m verification	MODE=2d_cv	RT-CV (Grounding DINO) + Behavior Analytics + alert-bridge VLM verifier + rtvi-vlm	Static CV pipeline (Workflow A) + verification results & verdicts (Workflow B) + on-demand verification (Workflow F). VIOS webhooks register streams with RT-CV. Realtime rule CRUD (D) and Slack (E) are gated to real-time mode (skill refuses on CV).
VLM (real-time)	-m real-time	MODE=2d_vlm	alert-bridge + rtvi-vlm	Dynamic VLM real-time alerts (Workflow D), Slack (E), incident queries (C), and always-on operation (Workflow G — ALERT_AGENT_ALWAYS_ON=true / alert_agent.always_on: true when deployed with -m real-time). No static CV pipeline.

Switching modes uses the vss-build-vision-ai teardown + deploy flow, asking for the other mode. Both modes use the same agent config.yml; VIOS webhooks follow notification_config_${MODE}.json. rtvi-vlm runs in both modes.

RTVI_VLM_KAFKA_ENABLED is mode-specific. overrides.env ships RTVI_VLM_KAFKA_ENABLED=false for verification (2d_cv), where nothing consumes RT-VLM's Kafka output and leaving it on makes RT-VLM publish duplicate incidents that Logstash indexes under mdx-vlm-incidents-1970-01-01. Real-time (2d_vlm) alerts depend on RT-VLM publishing to Kafka, so the line must be commented out in that mode — dev-profile.sh does this automatically for -m real-time. If a real-time deployment produces no alerts, check that this override is not still active in generated.env.

---

Step 1 — Detect the Currently Deployed Mode

Before running any alert workflow, check which mode is live.

Kubernetes — do not use docker ps. Prefer an explicit mode hint, then ask:

# Operator / deploy hint (preferred on Kubernetes).
# ALERTS_MODE=real-time|verification  or  MODE=2d_vlm|2d_cv
if [ -n "${ALERTS_MODE:-}" ]; then
  case "${ALERTS_MODE}" in
    real-time|realtime|vlm|2d_vlm) echo "mode=VLM" ;;
    verification|cv|2d_cv) echo "mode=CV" ;;
  esac
elif [ "${MODE:-}" = "2d_vlm" ]; then echo "mode=VLM"
elif [ "${MODE:-}" = "2d_cv" ]; then echo "mode=CV"
elif [ "${DEPLOYMENT_KIND:-docker}" = "kubernetes" ]; then
  # Docs walkthrough is real-time; ask rather than guessing from private pods.
  echo "Ask the user: is this alerts deployment real-time (VLM) or verification (CV)?"
fi

Docker only — use CV-only containers as the signal (vss-rtvi-vlm runs in both modes, so it is not a reliable mode signal alone):

if [ "${DEPLOYMENT_KIND:-docker}" != "kubernetes" ]; then
  # CV verification mode (vss-behavior-analytics + vss-rtvi-cv are CV-only)
  if docker ps --format '{{.Names}}' | grep -qx vss-behavior-analytics; then
    echo "mode=CV"
  # VLM real-time mode has no CV pipeline; vss-rtvi-vlm runs in both modes.
  elif docker ps --format '{{.Names}}' | grep -qx vss-rtvi-vlm; then
    echo "mode=VLM"
  fi
fi

If vss-behavior-analytics is present → CV mode (which also has vss-rtvi-vlm). If only vss-rtvi-vlm is present (and no CV pipeline) → VLM mode. If neither matches on Docker, the alerts profile is not deployed — direct the user to the vss-build-vision-ai skill.

Alternative Docker signal (preferred when docker ps isn't accessible): check the deployed generated.env, falling back to overrides.env before a deployment has generated one:

if [ "${DEPLOYMENT_KIND:-docker}" != "kubernetes" ]; then
  ENV_FILE=deploy/docker/developer-profiles/dev-profile-alerts/generated.env
  [ -f "$ENV_FILE" ] || ENV_FILE=deploy/docker/developer-profiles/dev-profile-alerts/overrides.env
  grep -E '^MODE=' "$ENV_FILE"
  # MODE=2d_cv   → CV mode (full superset)
  # MODE=2d_vlm  → VLM real-time mode (vss-rtvi-vlm only; no vss-rtvi-cv)
fi

---

Step 2 — Route by Deployed Mode

Deployed mode	User asks about…	Action
VLM real-time	Slack webhook setup/status/test/stop	Workflow E — references/alert-notify.md
VLM real-time	always-on status ("is always-on active?"), always-on incidents, "why aren't always-on alerts appearing?"	Workflow G — references/always-on.md (operate only; config authoring is out of scope)
CV verification	always-on operation	Refuse — always-on rides the realtime rule engine; canonical refusal text below
VLM real-time	rule CRUD, or start/stop a realtime alert on a sensor (with or without a detection condition — no condition → default prompt), or stop/delete a named alert (by alert_type/condition or rule ID)	Workflow D — references/alert-subscriptions.md (incl. two-step stop/confirm)
CV verification	subscription/rule CRUD or Slack/notification setup	Refuse — see canonical refusal text below
CV or VLM	incident lookup / what happened (recent alerts, time-range, casual "any alerts today?")	Workflow C (Query) — works on both; always run the query, never answer from memory
CV	verification results / verdicts ("was it confirmed?", "show verification results"), how does verification work, verifier-prompt customization	Workflow B (Verification) — references/verification.md. But a verdict/result follow-up to an on-demand verification just run ("was it confirmed?", "what was the result?") → stay in Workflow F: poll /realtime/incidents by the correlationId (that result is incident-kind, not in mdx-vlm-alerts-*)
CV	one-shot "verify this clip/image" with a media URL, or the literal "on-demand"	Workflow F (On-demand) — references/on-demand-verification.md
CV	static CV alert onboarding	Workflow A (CV) — onboard RTSP via vss-manage-video-io-storage; VIOS webhook registers it with RT-CV
VLM	verification results / verdict inspection, verifier-prompt config, or on-demand verification (CV-only capabilities)	Explain-only asks → answer from Workflow B/F background, no calls needed. Execution asks → VLM-mode refusal text below (redeploy hint -m verification)
VLM	a CV / behavior-analytics / PPE-rule alert needing the static CV pipeline	Redeployment required — confirm first, then the /vss-build-vision-ai stock Alerts workflow in verification mode
any	video summarization, highlight reels, reports, non-alert analytics	Out of scope — hand off to vss-generate-video-report / vss-query-analytics (Cross-Skill Links); do not answer it via incidents or rules, even when incidents are empty

Always confirm before triggering a redeploy. A mode switch stops all currently-running monitoring and restarts services.

Intent precedence (first match wins)

1. Workflow E (Slack) — Slack-specific keywords (slack, webhook + slack, bot token, slack channel). notify alone is not sufficient.
2. Workflow F (On-demand) — a one-shot "verify / check / analyze this" pointing at a specific media artifact (video/image URL, clip, file), or the literal on-demand. Guard: continuous monitoring of a sensor/stream is never F — that's D ("watch camera X for PPE" → D; "verify this clip URL for PPE" → F).
3. Workflow G (Always-on) — the literal always-on (status, incidents, troubleshooting phrasings). Operate-not-author: status checks and queries only; never author or edit always-on rule config. A request to create an ordinary realtime rule is not G — that's D.