Profiling Guide

This is the agent-facing profiling workflow for Kit-based applications (Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, Kit SDK). dev/docs/profiling-guide.md is the source of truth; keep this skill aligned with that guide.

Benchmark Accuracy: COLD / WARM / TRACY

Profilers add overhead. Keep measurement and diagnosis as separate runs:

1. COLD: first run after a fresh install/cache state. Use this to expose startup and shader-cache effects, not as the steady-state performance number.
2. WARM: same workload with caches already populated and profiling disabled. This is the authoritative FPS/frametime benchmark run.
3. TRACY: same cache state as WARM, Tracy backend enabled, CARB_PROFILING_PYTHON=1 set, and .tracy captured via a separate capture process. Use this for analysis only, not headline numbers.

Never report benchmark performance from a profiled run. Nsight Systems captures are also analysis-only and have their own overhead.

CPU ChromeTrace Backend

Use the CPU backend for short, shareable, offline captures or targeted runtime intervals.