The technology disclosed relates to the creation of a gesture library for subsequent use in filtering gestures. In particular, the methods disclosed here generate and store gestures and their characteristic values to create a set of user-defined reference gestures that can be compared against characteristics of actual gestures performed in a 3D sensory space. Based on these comparisons, a set of gestures of interest may be filtered from all the gestures performed in the 3D sensory space. The technology disclosed also relates to customizing gesture interpretation for a particular user, and to setting parameters for recognizing gestures by prompting the user to select values for characteristics of the gestures. In one implementation, the technology disclosed includes performing characteristic focused demonstrations of boundaries of the gesture. It further includes testing the interpretation of gestures by prompting the user to perform complete gesture demonstrations and receiving user evaluation regarding the interpretation.