crcglot

The CRC backend an AI assistant can delegate to. Deterministic, reveng-anchored CRC answers: compute, detect, reverse-engineer, and verify CRCs from a catalogue of 100+ algorithms, plus execution-verified code generation for C / C++ ⚙️, Rust 🦀, Go 🚦, C# #️⃣, Java ☕, Lua 🌙, Python 🐍, TypeScript 🔷, Zig ⚡, Verilog 🔧, and VHDL 🔌. Call it over MCP, from the CLI, or in Python. Zero-dependency core: stdlib only (an optional bundled C accelerator speeds up computation; the optional MCP server adds the MCP SDK).

Reach for it when a CRC crosses a boundary you don't control: a device to talk to, a capture to identify, an unknown checksum to reverse-engineer, or a verified implementation to drop into firmware. CRC code is easy to write and hard to trust, and the verification is what this package is really selling: answers come from the published reveng catalogue, everything it generates was compiled and executed against independent reference vectors before release, and every file embeds a self-test so you can re-run the check on your own toolchain. For bulk runtime hashing throughput, when to reach for something else names the better tool.

Quick start

A packet in one hand, a mystery CRC in the other: name it, then generate the verified implementation:

uv tool install crcglot

$ crcglot detect --hex "313233343536373839cbf43926"
crc32  width=32  endianness=big  form=hex  separator=''  prefix=''  per_byte=False  uppercase=False

$ crcglot c crc32 file=mycrc
Note: Faster CRC-32 path on C / C++: zlib's `crc32()` (`<zlib.h>`).  The generated code is fine for small messages, but for large files or streaming throughput prefer that library; it uses CPU CRC instructions where the processor supports them.
Wrote <your dir>\mycrc.h
Wrote <your dir>\mycrc.c

That's mycrc.h + mycrc.c: a verified CRC-32 with a built-in _self_test() that re-checks it against four independent reference CRCs on your toolchain.

The whole model is three choices: which algorithm (crc32, crc16-modbus, … ; crcglot list shows the more than 100), which language (c / python / rust / vhdl / verilog / go / csharp / java / typescript / zig / lua), and whether you want it --fast (fastest the target supports, and the default) or --small (smallest code). crcglot figures out the implementation details, so you never have to know what "slice-by-8" is.

crcglot rust crc32 file=mycrc            # fastest Rust crc32 (the default) to mycrc.rs
crcglot c crc8 --small                   # smallest C crc8, to stdout

Installation

uv tool install crcglot      # the CLI on PATH
uv add crcglot               # as a library in your project

Python 3.11+, zero runtime dependencies: crcglot imports nothing beyond the standard library. (The prebuilt wheels bundle an optional C accelerator for runtime CRC computation, covered in docs/api.md, so the package is not "pure Python" in the packaging sense, but it runs fully, on any platform, without it.) Per-target toolchains (gcc, rustc, tsx, iverilog, etc.) only matter if you want to run the generated code; the generator produces source either way.

What you get per language

Every target ships a runtime-callable _self_test(): C returns 0/1; Rust / Go / C# / Java / Lua / TypeScript / Zig / Python / Verilog / VHDL return bool / boolean / bit. No #[cfg(test)] gating, so you can call it from your release build, a boot self-check, or a startup assertion. Zig additionally emits a native test declaration, so zig test <file>.zig verifies the module with no harness. The generated files are also documented (per-language doc-tool styles) and named in each target's idiomatic casing; see docs/generated-code.md.

The generated Python is pure Python: portable and dependency-free, but interpreted, so it is the slow path. Generate the .py to port a CRC into a zero-dependency codebase; to compute fast in Python, call crcglot's own runtime instead (below).

How it's verified

The guarantee is behavioral, not structural. crcglot doesn't lint the generated code, it runs it: every one of the more than 100 algorithms, in every variant a target supports, in every one of the eleven languages, is generated, run through its real toolchain (gcc, rustc, go, dotnet, javac, tsx, zig, lua, iverilog, ghdl), and executed against reference vectors computed by two engines that are not ours. Ten categories of evidence make up the verification matrix, from reference vectors through adversarial review, and all of it is yours to re-run. docs/verification/index.md explains the review model and maps every category to the tests that carry it.

Every generated file also embeds a _self_test() over independent reference vectors. Call it once in your build environment (a unit test, a startup assertion, a boot check): CI compiles and runs the generated code through every target toolchain on Linux for each change, releases are re-verified across the full toolchain set on a Windows reference box, and only running the self-test on yours confirms your compiler, flags, endianness, and integer widths agree. What it checks, where its expected values come from, and what it buys you beyond correctness (a boot-time integrity check, auditability, a cleaner story for regulated builds) are in docs/generated-code.md.

Use it with Claude (and any MCP client)

crcglot[mcp] exposes the toolkit as a Model Context Protocol server, so an assistant (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, mcp-cli, …) does the judgment (which tool, which parameters, what the result means) while crcglot does the arithmetic. The hardest case, recovering an unknown custom CRC from captured frames, is worked end to end as a real chat session in docs/MCP.md.

uv tool install 'crcglot[mcp]'    # the extra ships the MCP SDK

Then wire it in. Claude Code, one command:

claude mcp add crcglot -- uvx --from 'crcglot[mcp]' crcglot-mcp

Claude Desktop (and other clients), via claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "crcglot": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "crcglot[mcp]", "crcglot-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Tools: crc_list · crc_info · crc_self_test_vectors · crc_detect · crc_reverse · crc_identify_trailer · crc_verify · crc_encode · crc_compute · crc_compute_many · crc_generate · crc_credits. Resources: crcglot://catalogue.json · crcglot://languages.json · crcglot://variants.json · crcglot://verbs.json. Full reference and setup walkthrough live in docs/MCP.md.

CLI at a glance

Every option, token, and example lives in docs/cli.md.

Catalogue

More than 100 algorithms covering everything from CRC-8 (ATM, AUTOSAR, Bluetooth, Maxim 1-Wire) through CRC-16 (Modbus, XMODEM, CCITT, IBM SDLC) through CRC-32 (Ethernet, bzip2, iSCSI, AUTOSAR) to CRC-64 (XZ, ECMA-182, NVMe, Redis), plus the non-byte-aligned families: CAN (CRC-15), CAN FD (CRC-17/21), FlexRay (CRC-11/24), LTE/BLE/OpenPGP (CRC-24), and the GSM/UMTS/CDMA2000 telecom set. Browse with crcglot list.

Programmatic API

Everything the CLI does is callable from Python, behind two typed registries. import crcglot loads only the compute core (4 modules, ~30 ms); the rest loads on first use.

from crcglot import LANGUAGES, ALGORITHMS

header, source = LANGUAGES["c"].generator("crc32")     # generate
modbus = ALGORITHMS["crc16-modbus"]                    # introspect
print(modbus.width, hex(modbus.check), modbus.desc)
# → 16 0x4b37 Modbus RTU serial protocol

LanguageInfo carries everything a UI or build script needs per target (extensions, variants, generators, naming/casing helpers); AlgorithmInfo is the full parameter set; VERBS is the verb manifest, every verb's parameters and choices as plain data for frontends that render typed tools, with call_verb(name, **params) as their uniform invoker. Custom polynomials plug into the same generators via generator_from_entry. The full API is in docs/api.md.

Pointing an LLM or coding agent at crcglot? Start with llms.txt: a concise, linked map of what the package does and where to look, to load first instead of crawling the source.

Fast runtime CRC (optional C extension)

Beyond generating code, crcglot computes CRCs at runtime. With the bundled C extension, any of the more than 100 CRCs runs from Python at compiled-C-class throughput on bulk data (~1.7 GB/s on a 1 MiB buffer), and IEEE CRC-32 / JAMCRC ride the stdlib's hardware path (tens of GB/s); the pure-Python fallback always works, far more slowly. generic_crc(data, crc) picks the fastest path available, with no variant knob. Streaming (crc_stream) and batch (generic_crc_many) APIs, the hot-loop warning, and the dispatch details are in docs/api.md; measured figures are in BENCHMARKS.md.

Example output and benchmarks

• EXAMPLES.md: the actual generated source, in three tours: every language, every implementation variant, every documentation style. Each block is reproducible with the one CLI command shown above it.
• BENCHMARKS.md: measured throughput for every (language × variant) cell, plus the runtime engine's paths.

When to reach for something else

crcglot tries to be the whole toolbox for CRC problems, not the best tool for every CRC-adjacent job. Two pointers:

• Bulk runtime hashing of non-CRC-32 algorithms: anycrc computes any ≤64-bit CRC via hardware carry-less multiplication at ~10× crcglot's C-extension throughput on large in-memory buffers. If your workload is "checksum gigabytes that are already in RAM with crc16," use it. (For IEEE CRC-32 crcglot already rides the stdlib's hardware path, and for small framed messages its batch API is the faster of the two. Behind real file I/O the difference mostly disappears; see BENCHMARKS.md.) crcglot uses anycrc itself, as one of the two independent engines that generate its reference vectors.
• Deep reverse-engineering of pathological captures: reveng (the C tool) has decades of accumulated handling for obscure reversal cases. crcglot's reverse() / crc_reverse covers the common paths (catalogue identification plus algebraic recovery of custom parameters), but if it comes up empty on a gnarly capture, reveng is the reference instrument, and its catalogue is the source crcglot's own algorithm data derives from.

Acknowledgments

crcglot builds on:

• The reveng CRC catalogue by Greg Cook: the canonical source of CRC algorithm parameters since 1999, and the source of the more than 100 parameter sets, descriptions, and check values every catalogue entry in crcglot is derived from.
• zlib by Mark Adler, Jean-loup Gailly et al.: the runtime fast path for CRC-32/ISO-HDLC and JAMCRC, which take the PCLMULQDQ folding path on x86 and the PMULL / crc32 instructions on ARM.
• The Rocksoft Model CRC parameterization by Ross N. Williams: the (width, poly, init, refin, refout, xorout, check) vocabulary every catalogue entry is expressed in.

crcglot credits prints this same content in the terminal, and crcglot.ATTRIBUTION / crcglot.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS expose it programmatically.

License

MIT