NeMo Guardrails
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NeMo Guardrails is an open-source toolkit for easily adding programmable guardrails to LLMLLMA large language model, a neural network trained on large amounts of text to recognize patterns and generate language. Applications use it for tasks such as answering, summarizing and writing code.-based conversational systems.
curl -sf http://localhost:8000/v1/health && echo 'server ready'
rails:
input:
flows:
- polygraf pii detection
- polygraf pii masking
export NEMO_GUARDRAILS_NO_USAGE_STATS=1
export NEMOGUARDRAILS_LLM_FRAMEWORK=langchain
from nemoguardrails.testing import *
# Use available test helpers here
guardrail_chain = RunnableRails(config_path).with_config(run_name="nemo_guardrails")
nemo guardrails --version
explanation = llm_rails.explain()
rails_config = RailsConfig.from_content(config=my_dict)
Summary
NeMo Guardrails is an open-source Python library, licensed under Apache 2.0, that adds programmable guardrails to LLM-based conversational applications to control outputs and block unsafe behavior. It's imported directly into an application's code, though it can also run as a standalone HTTP server exposing an OpenAI-compatible endpoint for checking inputs or outputs without generating a model response. It's built for developers building LLM applications who need to validate tool calls, screen retrieved content for context bloat, or detect and mask PIIPIIPersonally Identifiable Information — data that can identify a specific individual, such as names, email addresses, or SSNs. Cyber tools flag or redact it to limit exposure and meet privacy regulations., using either local Hugging Face classifiers or integrations like Polygraf, rather than for security teams auditing systems after the fact. It sits in the LLM runtime-protection category, alongside the broader set of guardrail and content-filtering libraries developers reach for when wiring safety checks into a chat pipeline.
NeMo Guardrails is an open-source toolkit for easily adding programmable guardrails to LLM-based conversational systems.
How NeMo Guardrails helps
Is a model about to act on a tool call it was never supposed to make?
checks streaming and non-streaming tool calls locally before execution, validating both what the model emits and what the application returns, and blocks or transforms the call under the same allow/block/transform contract
Is a chunk of retrieved content going to blow up my context window?
flags oversized, repetitive, low-entropy, or padded input and retrieved text before it gets passed to the model
Is there PII sitting in a user message or a model response before it goes further?
runs local Hugging Face classifiers or a Polygraf integration across input, output, and retrieval to detect and mask it in place
Can I screen a message for safety without paying for a full model response?
sends it to a standalone endpoint that runs the configured input or output rails and returns passed, modified, or blocked without generating a completion
Did last night's policy or model change quietly loosen what gets blocked?
every rail returns the same engine-neutral allow, block, or transform outcome, so swapping configurations or engines can be compared against the same verdict contract
Which of my safety checks can run purely on request and response content, without touching my application's internal state?
typed rail manifests declare each built-in rail's configuration, actions, and privacy properties, letting the standalone checking surface execute the ones that only need message content
Languages
Command line
No command matches.
| option | found in | since | description |
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Values are placeholders taken from each option’s declared default. Nothing is executed here — the output shown is a recording of a run that already happened.
Score card
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Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
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Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
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Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
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Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
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Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
- Community health
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Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
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Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
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Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
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Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply
Nine scores for NeMo Guardrails, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.
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Blank means never measured; nothing here is a filled-in zero.
Peer standings are included with Researcher and Business. See how this tool ranks against its competitors, using data we don't publish anywhere else.
See plans →Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.
How this is scored
- Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
- Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
- Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
- Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
- Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
- Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
- Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
- Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.
Release-note detail over time
See how much detail NeMo Guardrails puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.
Checking release-note history…
Releases
25 entries
No entries match these filters.
- August 20261
- July 20261
- May 20261
- March 20261
- January 20261
- December 20251
- November 20251
- October 20251
- September 20251
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- July 20251
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- February 20251
- January 20251
- November 20241
- September 20241
- July 20241
- May 20241
- April 20241
- March 20241
- February 20241
- January 20241
- December 20232
Project health
Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in NVIDIA-NeMo/Guardrails, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.
- Contributors 41 −7 vs prior 12 months
- Maintainers 2 +2 joined · −4 left, last 12 months
- Bus factor 1 committers behind half the commits
- Community-filed 77% of issues opened, last 12 months
- Median time to close 289 days first maintainer reply 5.8 days
- Open backlog 146 of 619 issues ever filed
- Issues opened / month 6 · 4 communitymaintainers
- Open backlog 146
- Contributors / month 6
- Commits / month 9
- Stars 7,137
- bugs 28%
- features 28%
- docs 7%
- other 37%
Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this
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