LexProvenance - lex-provenance-mcp

Verifiable, provenance-first legal corpora for AI systems. A read-only Model Context Protocol connector that lets AI agents search, fetch, and cite neutral, provenance-tracked bodies of law - with a tamper-evident content hash on every citation.

Status: v0.1 - public scaffold. This is a deliberately thin, credible interface layer, not a finished product. See the roadmap and what this is not.

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Why this exists

A dataset says "here are some documents." This connector says "here is how an AI agent can search, fetch, and cite these documents safely, with each answer traceable to an official source and verifiable against a content hash."

The connector is corpus-agnostic. It speaks to any provenance-first legal corpus that exposes a standard manifest - today three public "global-commons" corpora, tomorrow any body of law or regulation. The connector is the interface; the corpora are the asset.

What it connects (today)

Corpus	Domain	Canonical home
space_law	International & national space law	github · Hugging Face dataset
deep_seabed_mining	Deep seabed mining law (UNCLOS Part XI, ISA, US regime)	github · Hugging Face dataset
bbnj_high_seas	BBNJ / High Seas Treaty & framework	github · Hugging Face dataset

This repo ships only sample manifests (a few records each) that point to those canonical sources. It does not contain the full corpora.

Tools (read-only)

Tool	What it does	Tier
list_corpora	List available corpora + coverage	Free
search_corpus	Keyword search within one corpus	Free
fetch_document	Return one document's metadata + provenance	Free
fetch_provision	Return one provision (article/section)	Free
get_citation	Return a verifiable citation (source, date, SHA-256 hash, version)	Free
compare_provisions	Relate/compare provisions across corpora	Stub -> premium

Every tool is read-only. There are no write, edit, ingest, delete, or shell tools - by design, and enforced by a test (tests/test_read_only.py). See docs/security.md.

Verifiable citations (the differentiator)

get_citation returns the content SHA-256 hash and the dated version of the exact text it cites. An agent's citation therefore points not just at "Article 14" but at a specific, reproducible, tamper-checkable state of Article 14. If the stored text changes by one character, the hash changes - so a citation can be re-verified later. See docs/citation-model.md.

Quickstart

pip install -e ".[dev]"          # pure-Python tool logic + tests, no MCP SDK needed
python -m pytest -q              # all green

# To actually serve over MCP (stdio):
pip install -e ".[mcp]"
lex-provenance-mcp               # or:  python -m lex_provenance_mcp.server

Try the tool logic directly (no SDK required):

from lex_provenance_mcp import tools
print(tools.list_corpora())
print(tools.search_corpus("liability", corpus_id="space_law"))
print(tools.get_citation("space_law", document_id="outer-space-treaty", provision="Article VI"))

Commercial boundary

This connector is the free razor. The enriched, connected, and hosted layers are a separate paid offering - see docs/commercial.md. In short:

• Free / open: the connector, schemas, sample manifests, docs, in-corpus search/fetch/cite.
• Not in this repo (premium): full enriched corpora, cross-corpus reasoning, embeddings, monitoring / treaty-status intelligence, hosted search, private-corpus onboarding.

What this is not

• Not the corpora (those live in their own repositories and datasets).
• Not the corpus-construction methodology (that is a separate, private toolkit - this repo reveals what you fetch, never how the record is built).
• Not legal advice. See docs/legal-disclaimer.md.

Roadmap

• v0.1 (this): read-only connector scaffold, schemas, sample manifests, in-corpus tools, verifiable citations, adapter placeholders. No hosted service, no full corpus, no premium layer.
• v0.2: local search over selected public corpora; adapter examples that actually run.
• v0.3: richer citation model + corpus manifests consumed directly from canonical repos.
• Later (premium, not here): hosted MCP endpoint, cross-corpus intelligence, monitoring, institutional access.

Renaming

The public identity lives in one file - mcp_server/identity.py. Change BRAND_NAME, REPO_SLUG, TOOL_NAMESPACE, PACKAGE_NAME there (and rename the folder) to switch to any alternative name; nothing else hard-codes it.

Licence

Code and schemas: Apache-2.0 (LICENSE). Docs: CC BY 4.0 unless stated. Source legal texts are official public documents and are never relicensed. See NOTICE.