The Holoscan SDK is part of NVIDIA Holoscan, the AI sensor processing platform that combines hardware systems for low-latency sensor and network connectivity, optimized libraries for data processing and AI, and core microservices to run streaming, imaging, and other applications, from embedded to edge to cloud. It can be used to build streaming AI pipelines for a variety of domains, including Medical Devices, High Performance Computing at the Edge, Industrial Inspection and more.
Visit the Holoscan User Guide to get started with the Holoscan SDK: https://docs.nvidia.com/holoscan/sdk-user-guide/getting_started.html
The Holoscan User Guide includes:
We also recommend visiting NVIDIA HoloHub to view community projects and reusable components available for your Holoscan project.
The Holoscan User Guide documents several options to install and run the Holoscan SDK:
Visit the Holoscan User Guide for guidance to help choose which installation option may be right for your use case.
If the options above do not support your use case, you may prefer to build the SDK from source.
Please review Holoscan SDK prerequisites before getting started.
The Holoscan team publishes agent-readable skills that help you install, run, and explore the SDK from inside AI coding assistants such as Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot CLI. The skills live in the public NVIDIA/skills repository and are installed with the bundled skills CLI, which runs through npx and prompts you to choose a skill and an install destination — no manual cloning required:
npx skills add nvidia/skills
See skills/ for the list of available skills and a feedback link, or the AI Coding-Assistant Skills page in the user guide. Advanced install options are documented in the skills CLI advanced install guide.
We appreciate community discussion and feedback in support of Holoscan platform users and developers. We ask that users:
Holoscan SDK is developed internally and released as open source software. We welcome community contributions and may include them in Holoscan SDK releases at our discretion. Please refer to the Holoscan SDK Contributing Guide for more information.
The repository is organized as such:
cmake/: CMake configuration filesdata/: directory where data will be downloadedexamples/: source code for the examplesgxf_extensions/: source code for the holoscan SDK gxf codeletsinclude/: source code for the holoscan SDK coremodules/: source code for the holoscan SDK modulespatches/: patch files applied to dependenciespython/: python bindings for the holoscan SDKscripts/: utility scriptssrc/: source code for the holoscan SDK coretests/: tests for the holoscan SDK