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Quick Start

Prerequisites

Complete the Installation guide first, including downloading model checkpoints.

This guide walks you through a complete analysis using a demo video in under 5 minutes.

1. Launch CASTLE

python app.py

The Gradio web UI opens at http://localhost:7860.

2. Create a Project

  1. In the 0. Project tab, select New Project
  2. Enter a project name (e.g., my-first-project)
  3. Click Create

Create a new project in the Project tab

3. Upload a Video

  1. Switch to the 1. Upload Videos tab
  2. Upload one of the included demo videos:
    • demo/case1-reaching-task/reaching-task-raw.mp4 — rat reaching task
    • demo/case2-openfield/openfield-1min-raw.mp4 — open field experiment
    • demo/case5-gait/gait-raw.mp4 — gait analysis
    • demo/Reach-and-Grasp-demo.mp4 — reach and grasp demo

Upload a demo video

Tip

Start with reaching-task-raw.mp4 — it's short and works well for a first run.

4. Track ROIs

  1. Switch to the 2. Tracking ROIs tab
  2. In the Label ROI sub-tab, define your regions of interest on the first frame
  3. Use the ROI Prompts sub-tab to set prompts for the segmentation model
  4. Go to Tracking to run the tracker across all frames

Define and track ROIs

5. Extract Features

  1. Switch to the 3. Extract Latent tab
  2. Select your tracked ROIs
  3. Run feature extraction — this uses DINOv2/v3 to compute latent representations for each frame

Extract latent features

6. Analyze Behavior

  1. Switch to the 4. Behavior Microscope tab
  2. Configure clustering parameters
  3. Run the analysis to discover behavioral categories

Behavior analysis results

What's Next?

  • Tutorials — Detailed step-by-step guides for each stage of the pipeline
  • Technical Guide — Understand how CASTLE works under the hood
  • Configuration — Customize parameters for your experiments