Ross ROSS = Recommend OSS · open-source software intelligence for agents

broadinstitute/picard

A set of command line tools (in Java) for manipulating high-throughput sequencing (HTS) data and formats such as SAM/BAM/CRAM and VCF. observed · 2026-08-28

github.com/broadinstitute/picard · homepage · Java · MIT (permissive) observed · 2026-08-28

Health v2 · maintenance only

85/100

  • Activity 95
  • Release rhythm 63
  • Longevity 100
How is this computed?

round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-03. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.

  • gap_med: 329.5
  • age_days: 4541
  • days_rel: 33
  • days_push: 33
  • n_releases_24m: 3

Full methodology

Adoption not part of the score

1074 stars · 383 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

Picard is a set of Java command line tools from the Broad Institute for manipulating high-throughput sequencing data in formats such as SAM/BAM/CRAM and VCF. It is built on the HTSJDK library and distributed as a single executable jar.

Use cases

  • manipulate SAM/BAM/CRAM alignment files
  • validate and clean up VCF variant files
  • mark duplicate reads in BAM files
  • convert between sequencing file formats
  • collect metrics from sequencing data
  • process high-throughput sequencing data in pipelines

When to choose

  • you need reliable, widely-adopted tools for SAM/BAM/CRAM or VCF manipulation
  • you are building genomics pipelines (e.g. with GATK or WDL workflows)
  • you want a JVM-based alternative to samtools with rich metrics tools

When to avoid

  • you need a lightweight C binary you can add directly to PATH
  • your workflow is not Java/JVM-friendly
  • you need interactive visualization of sequencing data rather than command-line manipulation

Facets

cli-tool · maturity stable

cli developer-tools data-science bioinformatics files cli jvm cross-platform windows bioinformatics sam-bam cram vcf genomics high-throughput-sequencing htsjdk java command-line linux macos

2 sources

Member repositories

RepositoryRoleHealth v2
broadinstitute/picardmain85

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="broadinstitute/picard")

Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem