GPU hardware is scarce and queued behind production, yet every component in the Kubernetes GPU stack (device plugins, DRA drivers, the GPU Operator) depends on NVML, the user-space library that talks to the driver. Owning a GPU has therefore been a prerequisite for contributing to the layer. nvml-mock removes it: an open-source, YAML-configurable fake of libnvidia-ml.so that makes nvidia-smi and any go-nvml binary behave as if running on a DGX A100 or GB200 NVL node, whether on a laptop, in kind, or in a GitHub Actions runner with no GPUs attached. We describe what changed once contributors could run end-to-end tests without hardware: reproducible reviews, regression gates in CI, and a feedback loop no longer blocked on a hardware queue. We also cover the transferable pattern for other accelerator vendors, mocking the vendor library behind a CGo bridge with declarative device profiles, increasingly relevant as WG Device Management drives DRA to GA.