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Pose estimation is a systems problem, not a model bake-off

Key takeaways

Treat pose as a continuous capture → infer → render loop under one latency budget.

Measure p50 and p95 end-to-end on the demo machine, not only model milliseconds.

Separate inference work from overlays so drawing cannot stall the next frame.

Name a frame-drop policy under load (prefer drop oldest for live UX).

Pick MediaPipe-style vs YOLOPose-style for systems shape, not a bake-off slide.

Write capture conditions (light, distance, people count) into the product spec.

Point a camera at a person, draw a skeleton, call it live. The clip demo survives. The live stream often does not: lighting swings, frames drop, backgrounds get busy, and people feel 80 ms of lag even when they cannot name the number.

Keypoint accuracy without a calm loop is a lab number.…