{"slug": "show-hn-tgv-genome-viewer-for-you-and-your-agents", "title": "Show HN: tgv: Genome viewer for you and your agents", "summary": "Developer Zeqian Li released tgv (Terminal Genome Viewer) 0.4.0, a terminal-based genome browser that exposes omics data to AI agents through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). tgv supports BAM, VCF, BCF, BED and bigBed files, S3 object storage and any UCSC reference genome, and is installable via cargo, brew, bioconda or pre-built GitHub binaries, with MCP setup commands for Codex and Claude. The tool is in early development and a GUI version is planned.", "body_md": "## 0.4.0.mp4\n\ntgv (Terminal Genome Viewer) is blazing-fast. Your SSH session is no longer a black box.\n\n- Navigate genomes with vim-style commands (but the mouse works too).\n- Rich file format support: BAM, VCF, BCF, BED, bigBed; object storage (s3); and any UCSC reference genome.\n- tgv GUI coming soon.\n\n| Before tgv: agents draw questionable ASCII art. | After tgv: agents explain the analysis in an interactive session. | \n\ntgv organizes messy omics data to a [performant data engine](https://pola.rs/posts/release-polars-2/) that's fully exposed to agents through MCP. A multi-omics analysis takes a few lines of SQL queries.\n\n- No more glue scripts chaining `samtools` ,`bcftools` , and`awk` .\n- No more off-by-one bugs from mixing 0-based and 1-based tools.\n- No more wasted tokens.\n\nNote\n\ntgv is in early development. Please report bugs and we will fix them asap.\n\n- cargo: `cargo install tgv --locked`\n- brew: `brew tap zeqianli/tgv && brew install tgv`\n- bioconda: `conda install bioconda::tgv`\n- Pre-built binaries: [GitHub Releases](https://github.com/zeqianli/tgv/releases/)\n\nInstall tgv MCP:\n\n- Codex: `codex mcp add tgv -- tgv mcp`\n- Claude: `claude mcp add tgv -- tgv mcp`\n- Others: ask your agent\n\n```\n# Browse the hg38 human genome (internet needed)\ntgv\n```\n\n- `:q` : Quit\n- `h/j/k/l` : Left / down / up / right.`H/J/K/L` for faster navigation\n- `W/B/w/b` : Next gene / previous gene / next exon / previous exon\n- `z/o` : Zoom in / out\n- `/_gene_` /`/_chr_:_position_` : Go to a gene (e.g.`/TP53` ) or a position (e.g.`/1:2345` )\n- `_number_` +`_movement_` : Repeat movements (e.g.`20B` : back 20 genes)\n- `:ls` : Switch chromosomes\n- `:e _file_` : Open more files, or drag them into the terminal\n- Mouse: click, scroll, drag and hover.\n\nIf you use a reference genome frequently, downloading a local cache is highly recommended. This makes TGV much faster.\n\n```\n# The cache is in ~/.tgv by default.\ntgv download hg38\n```\n\nBrowse alignments:\n\n```\n# View file aligned to the hg38 human reference genome\ntgv file1.sorted.bam s3://my-bucket/file2.sorted.bam variants.vcf intervals.bed\n\n# BAM file with no reference genome\ntgv non_human.bam -r 1:123 --no-reference\n```\n\n", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-tgv-genome-viewer-for-you-and-your-agents", "canonical_source": "https://github.com/zeqianli/tgv", "published_at": "2026-10-10 03:12:19+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-10 03:27:36.734365+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "agent-protocols", "developer-tools", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["tgv", "Zeqian Li", "Model Context Protocol", "GitHub", "Codex", "Claude", "Polars", "UCSC"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-tgv-genome-viewer-for-you-and-your-agents", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-tgv-genome-viewer-for-you-and-your-agents.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-tgv-genome-viewer-for-you-and-your-agents.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-tgv-genome-viewer-for-you-and-your-agents.jsonld"}}