Miner Guide

Nepher Robotics · Bittensor Subnet 49

Nepher Robotics (Subnet 49) is a winner-takes-all robotics tournament on Bittensor. You train a navigation policy, submit it, and validators evaluate every agent in standardized Isaac Lab environments. Only the single top-scoring miner earns emissions per tournament.

Your job as a miner: train a policy → submit. Validators handle the rest. (Optionally self-evaluate first to preview your score.)

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1. Prerequisites

• GPU for training (NVIDIA, 24 GB+ VRAM). Submission itself is CPU-only.
• Python 3.10+, Isaac Sim 5.1, Isaac Lab 2.3.0.
• Bittensor wallet registered on Subnet 49.
• Nepher API key — get one at https://account.nepher.ai → API Keys.

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2. Wallet & Registration

pip install bittensor
btcli wallet new_coldkey --wallet.name miner
btcli wallet new_hotkey  --wallet.name miner --wallet.hotkey default
btcli subnet register --wallet.name miner --wallet.hotkey default --netuid 49

⚠️ Back up your coldkey mnemonic. If you lose it, you lose your funds.

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3. Get the Task Repo

Each tournament has its own task repo (linked on the dashboard) — an Isaac Lab external project containing the environment, training/play scripts, and the agent layout.

Clone it and follow its README for the exact, up-to-date steps to install the task module and register the environments:

git clone <task-repo-url>
cd <task-repo>
# then follow the repo README to install the task module + environments

Install the Nepher CLI (used later to submit) and log in:

pip install nepher-cli
npcli login --api-key nepher_xxxxxxxx             # or run `npcli login` and paste it

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4. Train & Prepare Your Policy

Use the training/play scripts and task IDs documented in the repo README. Train on the generic training task — validators benchmark on hidden EnvHub datasets, so a policy that generalizes well beats one overfit to specific scenes:

${ISAACLAB_PATH}/isaaclab.sh -p scripts/rsl_rl/train.py --task=<train-task> --headless

Play/test a checkpoint as shown in the README, then copy your best checkpoint to the required submission location:

cp /path/to/logs/rsl_rl/.../model_best.pt best_policy/best_policy.pt

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5. Submit to the Tournament

Submitting needs bittensor for wallet signing (the rest comes with nepher-cli):

pip install bittensor                             # or: pip install "nepher-cli[bittensor]"

npcli tournament check --path ./my-agent          # check structure first

npcli tournament submit \
    --path ./my-agent \
    --wallet-name miner \
    --wallet-hotkey default

The CLI uses your stored credentials from npcli login (or pass --api-key). If several tournaments are active, add --tournament-id <id>. On success you'll get an Agent ID and confirmation — the CLI validates your structure, zips and signs the archive with your wallet, and uploads it.

💡 You can submit multiple times — only your latest submission per hotkey is evaluated. Submit early so you have time to iterate.

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Appendix: Self-Evaluate (same pipeline as validators)

Optional but recommended — run the exact evaluation validators use to preview your score before submitting.

Install eval-nav and the nepher EnvHub package (required to load EnvHub scenes during evaluation):

git clone https://github.com/nepher-ai/eval-nav.git ./eval-nav
${ISAACLAB_PATH}/isaaclab.sh -p -m pip install -e ./eval-nav
${ISAACLAB_PATH}/isaaclab.sh -p -m pip install nepher

Optionally pre-download the benchmark scenes (validators use these exact environments; otherwise they download on demand):

npcli envhub download waypoint-benchmark-v1
npcli envhub download waypoint-sample-v1

eval-nav ships ready-made config YAMLs per task under configs/. Copy the one for your task and customize it (e.g. point policy_path at your best_policy.pt, adjust seeds/episodes):

cp ./eval-nav/configs/<your-task>.yaml eval_config.yaml

Run it:

${ISAACLAB_PATH}/isaaclab.sh -p ./eval-nav/scripts/evaluate.py \
    --config eval_config.yaml --headless

Your score is written to evaluation_result.json.

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Resources

• Website: https://nepher.ai · Docs: https://docs.nepher.ai · Dashboard: https://tournament.nepher.ai
• Account/API keys: https://account.nepher.ai · Discord: https://discord.gg/nepher
• Task repo: linked per-tournament on the dashboard/Discord (always read its README) · eval-nav · envhub
• Isaac Lab install guide

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Good luck, miner!