# Show HN: CLI for Vedic Astrological Charts (local calculations)

> Source: <https://github.com/dhruvkar/kundali>
> Published: 2026-10-20 20:51:25+00:00

A local Vedic astrology (Jyotish) engine and CLI. It computes the chart on your machine with the Swiss Ephemeris. Birth data never leaves the machine.

**New to Vedic astrology?** This is a free command-line tool that draws your birth chart in Vedic (traditional Indian) astrology, which places the planets against the actual star constellations, about 24° back from the Western zodiac, so your "sun sign" often shifts one sign earlier, and it does all the math on your own computer, so your birth details never go to a website.

It's also packaged as an agent skill (`SKILL.md`) for Claude Code and other agents that read skills.

- Planet positions, D1 and every divisional chart D2 to D60, plus the Bhav Chalit
- Planet and house tables: dignity, relationship, aspects, combustion
- Upagrahas (sub-planets such as Gulika)
- Birth panchang
- Vimshottari dasha down to the prana level
- Classical yogas, with their cancellation (bhanga) rules
- Ashtakavarga
- Shadbala and bhavabala (planet and house strength)
- Jaimini chara karakas, karakamsha and devatas
- Transits (gochara), Sade Sati, ingresses and stations

Two modes:

- **Classical** (the default): true local sidereal time, BPHS ashtakavarga tables, classical Chesta bala and yogas.
- **`--drik`** : reproduces[drikpanchang.com](https://www.drikpanchang.com) 's output, quirks included.

During development the numbers were checked cell by cell against Drik, using made-up charts only. `SKILL.md` has the accuracy table and the conventions that were reverse-engineered.

Needs [uv](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/). `kundali.py` is a uv script, so `pyswisseph` installs itself on first run.

```
git clone https://github.com/dhruvkar/kundali ~/.claude/skills/kundali   # or anywhere
ln -s ~/.claude/skills/kundali/kundali.py ~/.local/bin/kundali
```

The first place lookup downloads the GeoNames `cities1000` dump (about 11 MB) into `~/.cache/kundali/`. To skip it, pass `--lat/--lon/--tz` instead of a place name.

```
kundali city springfield                          # list matching places (an ambiguous name is never guessed)
kundali chart 2000-01-01 12:00 "Chennai"          # positions + D1 + D9
kundali chart 2000-01-01 12:00 1264527 --div d10 --json
kundali dasha 2000-01-01 12:00 "Chennai" --running
kundali yogas 2000-01-01 12:00 "Chennai" --explain
kundali transits 2000-01-01 12:00 "Chennai" --months 12
kundali shadbala|bhavabala|ashtakavarga|jaimini|panchang <date> <time> <place>
```

Every command takes `--json`, `--drik` and `--ayanamsha`. The ayanamsha choices are `chitra-paksha` (Lahiri, the default), `bv-ramana`, `krishnamurthi-paddhati` and `tropical`.

```
for t in test_*.py; do uv run --quiet --with pyswisseph python3 $t || echo "FAIL $t"; done
```

`test_snapshot.py` runs every command on three made-up charts and compares the results with `snapshots/`. After an intended change, regenerate them with `--update` and review the diff.

AGPL-3.0, because the Swiss Ephemeris (via `pyswisseph`) is AGPL-3.0, or commercially licensed by [Astrodienst](https://www.astro.com/swisseph/). Place data comes from [GeoNames](https://www.geonames.org/) under CC BY 4.0.