Developer Guide

This guide is for contributors and plugin authors who want to understand how MindSight works internally or extend it with new functionality. It covers the core architecture, each processing module, the plugin system, and the test suite.

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• Architecture Deep Dive

  High-level data flow, threading model, and module boundaries.

• FrameContext Reference

  The per-frame data structure passed through every pipeline stage.

• Object Detection Module

  How detections are produced, filtered, and attached to FrameContext.

• Gaze Processing Module

  Face crop extraction, backend dispatch, ray geometry, and gaze target resolution.

• Phenomena Engine

  Tracker lifecycle, the update() contract, and built-in detector internals.

• Data Collection Module

  CSV writer, heatmap generator, video overlay renderer, and dashboard hooks.

• Plugin System

  Discovery, registration, base classes, and the argument injection mechanism.

• Writing a Plugin

  Step-by-step instructions for creating a plugin from scratch.

• Plugin Tutorials

  Worked examples for all four plugin types: Phenomena, Gaze, Object Detection, Data Collection.

• Pipeline YAML: Loader Internals

  How the YAML loader maps keys to argparse, resolves precedence, and flows plugin flags into from_args.

• Testing

  Running the test suite and writing tests for new code and plugins.