Cosmos3 — smoke-test runner
The canonical reference for Cosmos3OmniModularPipeline lives in the diffusers docs:
docs/source/en/api/pipelines/cosmos3.md. Use the
examples there as the source of truth for application code — they cover text-to-image,
text-to-video, image-to-video, and text+sound modes.
This directory provides two files:
inference_cosmos3.py— the runnableCosmos3OmniModularPipelineCLI (text-to-image/video, image-to-video, sound, action modes). Single-GPU by default; pass--tp-degree/--cp-degreeand launch withtorchrunto run any modality multi-GPU (see Multi-GPU inference below).cosmos_parallel.py— the importable multi-GPU helpers (context + tensor parallelism). Nomain; the CLI imports from it. Read it to understand or adapt the sharding.
Setup
pip install -r examples/cosmos3/requirements.txt
Usage
Text-to-image:
python examples/cosmos3/inference_cosmos3.py \
--prompt "A medium shot of a modern robotics research laboratory…" \
--num-frames 1
Text-to-video:
python examples/cosmos3/inference_cosmos3.py \
--prompt "A waterfall cascading down a rocky cliff in a lush forest."
Image-to-video:
python examples/cosmos3/inference_cosmos3.py \
--prompt "The right robotic hand picks up the red sphere…" \
--vision-path https://github.com/nvidia-cosmos/cosmos-dependencies/releases/download/assets/robot_153.jpg
Video-to-video (condition on the leading frames of a clip and continue it):
python examples/cosmos3/inference_cosmos3.py \
--prompt "A robotic arm finishes pouring liquid into the glass." \
--video-path "https://github.com/nvidia-cosmos/cosmos-dependencies/raw/refs/heads/assets/cosmos3/inputs/vision/robot_pouring.mp4" \
--condition-frame-indexes-vision 0,1 \
--condition-video-keep first
Text-to-video-with-sound (sound-capable checkpoint only):
python examples/cosmos3/inference_cosmos3.py \
--prompt "A waterfall in a lush forest." \
--enable-sound
Action forward dynamics, robot domain (predict video from an observation video and a provided action chunk):
python examples/cosmos3/inference_cosmos3.py \
--model nano \
--prompt "Put the pot to the left of the purple item." \
--vision-path "https://github.com/nvidia-cosmos/cosmos-dependencies/raw/refs/heads/assets/cosmos3/inputs/action/bridge_0.mp4" \
--action-mode forward_dynamics \
--action-path "https://github.com/nvidia-cosmos/cosmos-dependencies/raw/refs/heads/assets/cosmos3/inputs/action/bridge_0.json" \
--action-chunk-size 16 \
--domain-name bridge_orig_lerobot \
--resolution-tier 480 --fps 5 \
--num-inference-steps 30 --guidance-scale 1.0 --flow-shift 10.0 --seed 0 \
--output results/cosmos3_forward_dynamics_robot
Action forward dynamics, autonomous-vehicle domain:
python examples/cosmos3/inference_cosmos3.py \
--model nano \
--prompt "You are an autonomous vehicle planning system." \
--vision-path "https://github.com/nvidia-cosmos/cosmos-dependencies/raw/refs/heads/assets/cosmos3/inputs/action/av_vision_25_73d01c91-51f0-46cf-9b76-5682a76fb349.mp4" \
--action-mode forward_dynamics \
--action-path "https://github.com/nvidia-cosmos/cosmos-dependencies/raw/refs/heads/assets/cosmos3/inputs/action/av_action_25.json" \
--action-chunk-size 60 \
--domain-name av \
--resolution-tier 480 --fps 10 \
--num-inference-steps 30 --guidance-scale 1.0 --flow-shift 10.0 --seed 0 \
--output results/cosmos3_forward_dynamics_av
Action inverse dynamics, robot domain (predict actions from an observed video):
python examples/cosmos3/inference_cosmos3.py \
--model nano \
--prompt "Put the pot to the left of the purple item." \
--vision-path "https://github.com/nvidia-cosmos/cosmos-dependencies/raw/refs/heads/assets/cosmos3/inputs/action/bridge_0.mp4" \
--action-mode inverse_dynamics \
--action-chunk-size 16 \
--domain-name bridge_orig_lerobot \
--resolution-tier 480 --fps 5 \
--num-inference-steps 30 --guidance-scale 1.0 --flow-shift 10.0 --seed 0 \
--output results/cosmos3_inverse_dynamics_robot
Action inverse dynamics, autonomous-vehicle domain:
python examples/cosmos3/inference_cosmos3.py \
--model nano \
--prompt "You are an autonomous vehicle planning system." \
--vision-path "https://github.com/nvidia-cosmos/cosmos-dependencies/raw/refs/heads/assets/cosmos3/inputs/action/av_vision_25_73d01c91-51f0-46cf-9b76-5682a76fb349.mp4" \
--action-mode inverse_dynamics \
--action-chunk-size 60 \
--domain-name av \
--resolution-tier 480 --fps 10 \
--num-inference-steps 30 --guidance-scale 1.0 --flow-shift 10.0 --seed 0 \
--output results/cosmos3_inverse_dynamics_av
Action policy, robot domain (predict both future video and actions from the first observation frame):
python examples/cosmos3/inference_cosmos3.py \
--model nano \
--prompt "Put the pot to the left of the purple item." \
--vision-path "https://github.com/nvidia-cosmos/cosmos-dependencies/raw/refs/heads/assets/cosmos3/inputs/action/bridge_0.mp4" \
--action-mode policy \
--action-chunk-size 16 \
--domain-name bridge_orig_lerobot \
--resolution-tier 480 --fps 5 \
--num-inference-steps 30 --guidance-scale 1.0 --flow-shift 10.0 --seed 0 \
--output results/cosmos3_policy_robot
Action policy, autonomous-vehicle domain:
python examples/cosmos3/inference_cosmos3.py \
--model nano \
--prompt "You are an autonomous vehicle planning system. Please go backward." \
--vision-path "https://github.com/nvidia-cosmos/cosmos-dependencies/raw/refs/heads/assets/cosmos3/inputs/action/av_vision_25_73d01c91-51f0-46cf-9b76-5682a76fb349.mp4" \
--action-mode policy \
--action-chunk-size 60 \
--domain-name av \
--resolution-tier 480 --fps 10 \
--num-inference-steps 30 --guidance-scale 1.0 --flow-shift 10.0 --seed 0 \
--output results/cosmos3_policy_av
Action modes use action_chunk_size + 1 conditioning frames. forward_dynamics consumes --action-path; inverse_dynamics and policy write predicted actions to sample_action.json in model-normalized action space. This script loads --vision-path as a video for all action modes; policy and forward_dynamics condition only on the first frame, while inverse_dynamics uses the whole video.
Pass --prompt as a plain task description and select the camera perspective with --view-point (default ego_view); the pipeline builds the structured action caption (task, viewpoint, duration, FPS, resolution) the model was trained on. Do not hand-write the viewpoint sentence into --prompt.
--resolution-tier is a resolution tier (256/480/704/720). The tier keys a table of predefined aspect-ratio canvases; the one closest to the input aspect ratio becomes the padded conditioning canvas. It is not the output frame size: the input is downscaled (never upscaled) and padded to fill the canvas, then the padding is cropped from the latents so the decoded output follows the downscaled input content. --height / --width (and --num-frames) are ignored for action modes.
Pick the tier that matches the native resolution of your conditioning input (480 for ~480p, 720 for ~720p). A tier below your input downscales it and discards detail; a tier above your input gains no resolution (content is never upscaled), wastes compute on padding, and is a train/inference distribution mismatch that can degrade quality.
Useful flags
| Flag | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
--prompt |
(required) | Text prompt. |
--vision-path |
None |
URL or local path for an image-conditioning frame (image-to-video), or the image/video conditioning for action modes. |
--num-frames |
189 |
1 = image, otherwise number of video frames (189 ≈ 7.9 s @ 24 FPS). Ignored for action modes (derived from --action-chunk-size). |
--height / --width |
720 / 1280 |
Output resolution (must be a multiple of the VAE spatial scale factor). Ignored for action modes; use --resolution-tier. |
--resolution-tier |
480 |
Action resolution tier (256/480/704/720): selects the aspect bin / padded conditioning canvas, not the output size. |
--fps |
24.0 |
Frame rate of the generated video. |
--flow-shift |
None |
Override UniPCMultistepScheduler.flow_shift (and force use_karras_sigmas=False); left at the checkpoint default when unset. Cosmos3 runs use 10.0. |
--enable-sound |
off | Generate a synchronized audio track. |
--action-mode |
None |
Enable action conditioning/generation. One of forward_dynamics, inverse_dynamics, or policy. |
--action-path |
None |
URL or local JSON action path for forward_dynamics. |
--action-chunk-size |
None |
Number of action tokens. Action runs generate/use action_chunk_size + 1 video frames. |
--domain-name |
None |
Action embodiment domain, for example bridge_orig_lerobot or av. |
--view-point |
ego_view |
Camera perspective for the action caption's framing (ego_view, third_person_view, wrist_view, concat_view). Action only. |
--no-duration-template |
off | Skip the duration metadata sentence appended to the prompt and negative prompt. Ignored for --num-frames 1 and for action modes (which build a structured caption instead). |
--no-resolution-template |
off | Skip the resolution metadata sentence appended to the prompt and negative prompt. Ignored for action modes. |
--output |
. |
Directory to write sample.jpg or sample.mp4. |
Multi-GPU inference (context parallelism)
Cosmos 3 can be sharded across GPUs on two orthogonal axes (implemented in cosmos_parallel.py):
- Context parallelism (CP) —
enable_cosmos3_context_parallel. The sequence is sharded across GPUs and attention runs with two Ulysses all-to-all collectives per layer, cutting per-step latency for long videos / high resolutions. Weights are replicated, so this is for models that already fit one GPU (Nano). - Tensor parallelism (TP) —
enable_cosmos3_tensor_parallel. The attention and MLP weight matrices are sharded across GPUs (Megatron-style), so a checkpoint that doesn't fit one GPU (Super, ~120 GB) loads. The sequence is not sharded. - TP + CP — both at once on a 2-D
(tp, cp)mesh: a large model and latency.
The model itself carries no parallelism logic — it exposes small no-op shard/gather seams, and
cosmos_parallel.py implements the entire path (collectives, GQA KV-head handling, ragged-length
padding, the dual-pathway attention, weight sharding) behind those two helpers. It is meant to be
read end to end and adapted.
The CLI imports these helpers, so you run any modality (text-to-image/video, image-to-video,
sound, action modes) multi-GPU by adding --tp-degree / --cp-degree and launching with
torchrun — --tp-degree * --cp-degree
must equal --nproc_per_node:
# CP only (Nano): CP degree must divide the 32 query heads.
torchrun --nproc_per_node 4 examples/cosmos3/inference_cosmos3.py --model nano --cp-degree 4 --prompt "..."
# TP only (Super): TP degree must divide the 64 query heads and 8 KV heads.
torchrun --nproc_per_node 4 examples/cosmos3/inference_cosmos3.py --model super --tp-degree 4 --prompt "..."
# TP + CP (Super), 4 GPUs as 2 x 2, with sound:
torchrun --nproc_per_node 4 examples/cosmos3/inference_cosmos3.py \
--model super --tp-degree 2 --cp-degree 2 --enable-sound --prompt "A waterfall in a forest."
Modular pipeline setup
The CLI uses Cosmos3OmniModularPipeline, not the legacy task pipeline. Its distributed setup order is important:
- Construct it with
Cosmos3OmniModularPipeline.from_pretrained(...)and callpipe.load_components(dtype=torch.bfloat16)while it is still on CPU. Do not usedevice_map. - Initialize the NCCL process group and call
torch.cuda.set_device(local_rank)before building the device mesh or applying TP. If needed, replace the scheduler withpipe.update_components(scheduler=...)and apply TP topipe.transformerwhile it is still on CPU. - Move the pipeline to
cuda:${LOCAL_RANK}, select thenativeattention backend, and then enable CP (or the GQA-safe dense attention helper for TP-only runs). - Before generation, call
pipe.enable_safety_checker()to load and enable the default checker, orpipe.disable_safety_checker()to explicitly opt out. The task-pipelineenable_safety_checker=construction argument andenable_safety_check=call argument do not configure the modular pipeline.
Modular calls request outputs explicitly: output="videos" returns frames directly, while
output=["videos", "sound", "sampling_rate", "action"] returns a dictionary. Read values such as
outputs["videos"] from that dictionary rather than result.video, result.sound, or
result.action; sound and action are None when their respective workflows are not used. The
pipeline documentation has a
complete direct-use example.
Notes:
- The helpers use the
nativeattention backend (the only one that supports GQA'senable_gqa), and expand the KV heads to the query-head count so SDPA picks the flash kernel — passingenable_gqa=Trueforces the math kernel, which materializes the full[S, S]scores and OOMs on long sequences. - Only Ulysses is supported (not ring attention).
- The CP/Ulysses degree must divide the query heads (32 for
Nano, 64 forSuper). For TP,tpmust divide the KV heads (8), andtp * cpmust divide the query heads. - TP all-reduces on every block, so it's bandwidth-heavy — use the smallest TP degree that makes the weights fit and put the remaining GPUs into CP.
- Generation size is set with the usual CLI flags (
--num-frames/--height/--width), and multi-GPU runs require a seed for reproducibility across ranks (the CLI sets one if you omit--seed). - On some multi-GPU topologies the first NCCL all-to-all can hang; if a run stalls at the first
denoising step, set
NCCL_P2P_DISABLE=1before launching.
See the pipeline docs for how to enable CP and TP from your own pipeline code.