Install

Pre-built binaries

Download from GitHub Releases — no Rust or Homebrew required.

macOS

# Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4)
curl -L https://github.com/robertlangdonn/vcfkit/releases/latest/download/vcfkit-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv vcfkit /usr/local/bin/

# Intel Mac
curl -L https://github.com/robertlangdonn/vcfkit/releases/latest/download/vcfkit-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv vcfkit /usr/local/bin/

Linux

# x86_64 (most servers and desktops)
curl -L https://github.com/robertlangdonn/vcfkit/releases/latest/download/vcfkit-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv vcfkit /usr/local/bin/

# ARM64 (e.g. Graviton, Raspberry Pi)
curl -L https://github.com/robertlangdonn/vcfkit/releases/latest/download/vcfkit-aarch64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv vcfkit /usr/local/bin/

Windows

Download vcfkit-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip from GitHub Releases, extract, and add the folder to your PATH.

Or with PowerShell:

$url = "https://github.com/robertlangdonn/vcfkit/releases/latest/download/vcfkit-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip"
Invoke-WebRequest $url -OutFile vcfkit.zip
Expand-Archive vcfkit.zip -DestinationPath $env:LOCALAPPDATA\vcfkit
# Add $env:LOCALAPPDATA\vcfkit to your PATH via System Settings > Environment Variables

Install script (macOS / Linux)

curl -fsSL https://vcfkit.dev/install.sh | sh

From crates.io

cargo install vcfkit-cli

Requires Rust 1.75+. Install Rust from rustup.rs if needed.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/robertlangdonn/vcfkit
cd vcfkit
cargo build --release
./target/release/vcfkit --version

Shell completions

# Bash
vcfkit completions bash >> ~/.bashrc

# Zsh
vcfkit completions zsh >> ~/.zshrc

# Fish
vcfkit completions fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/vcfkit.fish

Verify install

echo '##fileformat=VCFv4.2
#CHROM  POS  ID  REF  ALT  QUAL  FILTER  INFO
chr1  100  .  A  T  .  .  .' | vcfkit filter -e 'POS > 50'

Expected: the header lines followed by the variant, plus a stats summary.

Requirements

• No runtime dependencies — single static binary
• Reference FASTA files for normalize (-r/--ref) — download from UCSC or Ensembl
• Chain files for liftover (--chain) — see liftover docs
• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY for filter --ask — see filter docs