---

name: configuration-models description: "Inspect, edit, validate, and reason about PySOT YACS configs, model builders, tracker mappings, model-zoo naming, and safe model construction." disable-model-invocation: true metadata: disco-role: operating license: Apache 2.0

PySOT configuration and model guidance

Use this sub-skill when the task is about PySOT experiment YAMLs, cfg keys, META_ARC, model-family selection, backbone/RPN/head/neck/tracker mappings, model-zoo names, or safe construction of ModelBuilder/build_tracker without running a benchmark or training job.

Read this sub-skill when

• A user asks to edit, compare, or validate a PySOT config file.
• A user asks which SiamRPN, SiamMask, long-term, AlexNet, ResNet, or MobileNetV2 variant fits a task.
• A user asks what META_ARC, TRACK.TYPE, ANCHOR.*, RPN.KWARGS.anchor_num, TRAIN.OUTPUT_SIZE, or BACKBONE.KWARGS.used_layers means.
• A user gets KeyError, missing-key, anchor-count, size not match!, ModelBuilder, or build_tracker failures while loading a config or building the model graph.
• A user wants a safe preflight before using a snapshot, running a demo/test, or starting training.

Route elsewhere

• Demo, video/webcam/image-folder tracking, snapshot loading, and benchmark test execution: read sibling tracking-inference.
• Training datasets, crop/annotation formats, distributed launch, pretrained training backbones, and training data validation: read sibling training-data.
• Benchmark dataset/result directory layouts, OPE/EAO/AR/F1 metrics, eval.py, and hyperparameter-search result interpretation: read sibling evaluation-toolkit.
• Cross-cutting install/import/backend guidance belongs in the root PySOT troubleshooting reference; keep config/model-specific diagnosis here.

Operating workflow

1. Identify the user-supplied PySOT config path and the intended workflow: model choice, config edit, construction smoke, tracking run, training, or evaluation.

2. Read references/configuration.md for required YAML sections, common model families, safe edit rules, and anchor/output-size formulas.

3. Read references/model-api.md before writing code that imports cfg, ModelBuilder, or build_tracker.

4. Read references/model-zoo.md when selecting among model-zoo names or interpreting suffixes such as _otb, _lt, _8gpu, and _16gpu.

5. Run the bundled validator before any heavy workflow:

   python scripts/validate_config.py --config path/to/config.yaml
   

   If the task specifically asks whether the model graph and tracker can be constructed, add:

   python scripts/validate_config.py --config path/to/config.yaml --instantiate-model
   

   This is a CPU-safe construction smoke: it does not load a snapshot, open video, run inference, launch training, download assets, or evaluate benchmarks.

6. If validation fails, use references/troubleshooting.md. Fix config keys and rerun validation before routing to execution-oriented sub-skills.

Key safety rules

• Pair a downloaded snapshot with the config family it was trained for; do not assume a checkpoint can be loaded under a different backbone, RPN, mask, or tracker setting.
• Treat full benchmark/test/training runs as user-asset and often CUDA-dependent workflows. This sub-skill only validates config/model construction.
• PySOT's package metadata installs the toolkit distribution; importing pysot normally depends on using the source checkout through PYTHONPATH or an editable-development setup.
• Do not ask future users to reopen original repository docs or scripts for the information covered here; use the bundled references and helper script.

References and bundled helper

• references/configuration.md — config sections, model-family keys, edit workflow, anchor and output-size checks.
• references/model-api.md — verified cfg, ModelBuilder, component maps, tracker dispatch, and safe construction pattern.
• references/model-zoo.md — model-zoo name grammar, suffixes, benchmark columns, and selection guidance.
• references/troubleshooting.md — config/model failure modes and expected validator signals.
• scripts/validate_config.py — safe argparse validator for PySOT YAML configs and optional construction smoke.