DeepLabCut / DeepLabCut/DeepLabCut

Update (or remove) command line interface

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#3,381 1 comment 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@deruyter92 is already working on this.

Since Jun 24, 2026.

  • #3456 by @deruyter92 — open
feature request
Dominant language
Python
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Description

Summary

deeplabcut/cli.py is currently stale/unmaintained/outdated and not integrated with the PyTorch-first API. The Click-based CLI exposes workflow commands (create_new_project, extract_frames, train_network, analyze_videos, etc.) that currently bypass deeplabcut.compat and call pose_estimation_tensorflow directly, so they do not follow engine selection used by the public API.

In addition:

  • cli.py is not really documented or tested
  • click is not declared in pyproject.toml dependencies
  • version banner prints deeplabcut v0.0., and --verbose is unused

Proposed direction

  • As our documentation primarily mentions the python API and GUI as entry points, we should consider removing cli.py. It is currently not functional and can lead to confusion.
  • We could decide (e.g. after dropping TensorFlow) to create a new command line interface that matches the PyTorch API. This does not necessarily have to use Click - there are good alternatives (e.g. Typer).

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