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Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver

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Introducing GoCVKit: Zero-Boilerplate Computer Vision in Go

Hey there, fellow Gophers! If you’ve worked with computer vision in Go, you know GoCV is fantastic for accessing OpenCV’s power.

But the reality? Boilerplate everywhere: camera setup, Mat management, window handling, resource leaks, and recompiling just to tweak a parameter. It’s not exactly “fun.”

That’s why I created GoCVKit—a modular framework that makes real-time CV prototyping smooth, efficient, and genuinely enjoyable.

What is GoCVKit?
GoCVKit is a clean, idiomatic layer on top of GoCV for live camera or video streams. It handles the heavy lifting so you can focus on ideas, not plumbing.

Key features:
• Zero boilerplate: Full apps in ≤10 lines.
• Hot-reload config: Edit config.toml and changes apply instantly—no restarts.
• Performance-focused: Double-buffered pipelines with zero per-frame allocations.
• Extensible: Built-in processors (Grayscale, GaussianBlur, Canny, Sobel, etc.) plus easy custom filters.
• Quality-of-life extras: Video recording, toggleable FPS overlay, frame callbacks, graceful shutdown, and seamless input switching (webcam or file).

Why I Built This
Go is perfect for CV: fast, concurrent, and easy to deploy. But raw GoCV meant rewriting the same scaffolding repeatedly. GoCVKit eliminates that pain, making it ideal for:
• Rapid prototyping
• Teaching and demos
• Live presentations
• Real-time vision apps
• Anyone who wants to stay sane while experimenting

Get Started
go get github.com/Elliot727/gocvkit

Head to the repo for full documentation, processor list, and custom filter guides:
github.com/Elliot727/gocvkit

Star it if it saves you time, contribute if you make it better, and tell your friends—Go deserves a first-class CV experience! 🚀
What real-time CV projects are you working on? Let me know in the comments!

Top comments (2)

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Art light

This is really impressive work—clean, practical, and clearly built by someone who understands the real pain points of GoCV. I genuinely love the idea and would be very interested in collaborating or contributing if you’re open to it.

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Elliot Silver

You’re welcome to fork the repo and open pull requests if you want to contribute. If things go well and we collaborate more, I can add you as a direct contributor later