Quickstart

Install

brew tap vrksh/vrksh && brew install vrk

Other methods: install page.

Check it works

No API key needed. This runs locally in milliseconds.

vrk uuid
# 745be599-18d1-47ad-9821-bcdb34b784a8

echo 'Hello world' | vrk tok
# 2

Set your API key

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

Or use OpenAI instead:

export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

First LLM call

echo 'Explain exit codes in one sentence.' | vrk prompt

The response prints to stdout. Errors go to stderr. Exit 0 on success, 1 on failure.

First pipeline

Fetch a web page, strip the markup, count the tokens, and redact any secrets before sending to an LLM:

vrk grab https://example.com \
  | vrk plain \
  | vrk mask \
  | vrk tok --check 8000 \
  | vrk prompt --system 'Summarize this page in three bullet points.'

Five tools, one line. If the page exceeds 8,000 tokens, tok exits 1 and the pipeline stops before the API call. If the page contains secrets, mask replaces them with [REDACTED] before anything reaches the LLM.

Where to go next

• All 26 tools - flags, exit codes, examples
• Recipes - multi-tool pipeline patterns
• Agent integration - using vrk from AI agents