---

name: remote-service-client description: "Use Docling through a remote docling-serve service: convert-remote CLI, service client SDK, async jobs, batches, chunking, credentials, timeouts, and network-safe troubleshooting." disable-model-invocation: true metadata: disco-role: operating license: MIT

Remote Service Client

Use this sub-skill when the task involves a running docling-serve endpoint, the docling convert-remote CLI, or the docling.service_client SDK.

Route Here

• Convert documents through a remote service instead of local DocumentConverter.
• Configure DOCLING_SERVICE_URL, DOCLING_SERVICE_API_KEY, --service-url, or --api-key.
• Use DoclingServiceClient or AsyncDoclingServiceClient for convert, convert_all, async task jobs, batch sources, result targets, or chunk endpoints.
• Diagnose remote auth, service reachability, task timeouts, websocket/polling behavior, quotas, missing tasks, or presigned artifact access.

Route Elsewhere

• Local file conversion, local CLI output/export behavior, and non-service DocumentConverter usage belong in the conversion/CLI sub-skill.
• Local pipeline internals that call remote model APIs, such as picture-description API models, belong in the advanced-pipelines sub-skill; note those pipeline internals require explicit remote-service enablement on the service side.
• ASR, VLM, GPU, MLX, or model-download setup belongs in the relevant pipeline/backend sub-skill unless the issue is only service-client connectivity.

Start Points

• For Python SDK usage, read references/service-client.md.
• For docling convert-remote, read references/remote-cli.md.
• For failures and safe preflight checks, read references/troubleshooting.md and use scripts/check_service_config.py.

Safety Defaults

• Do not upload documents during configuration checks unless the user explicitly asks for a real conversion.
• Prefer no-network validation first; use scripts/check_service_config.py --ping only when the user authorizes a service health request.
• Treat service URLs, API keys, private artifact URLs, and presigned result links as credentials or sensitive infrastructure details.