Repository Structure

This repository is composed of three main components: the agent-host skill system (skills + agents), the MCP servers (legislation + caselaw), and supporting scripts/templates.

A hosted web app, The Counsel (https://the-counsel.co.uk), is built on these same skills but lives in a separate repository.

Figure 1 — the 2026 system map.

Figure 1.a — the broadsheet rebrand of the older framing.

Figure 1.b — the original architecture plate, kept for reference.

Mermaid source — the diagram above is generated from this

flowchart TB
  subgraph A["I · Skills and agents, one canon"]
    direction LR
    CLI["Skills<br/>legal · skills · agents"]
    REG["skill-registry.json<br/>38 skills · 12 agents"]
    CLI --- REG
  end
  subgraph L["II · Live UK law"]
    direction LR
    LEG["legislation.gov.uk<br/>uk-legislation MCP"]
    CASE["caselaw MCP + Lex<br/>63,000 judgments"]
  end
  REG --> L

Directory Tree

uk-legal-skills/
├── legal/SKILL.md              — Main orchestrator (routes /legal commands)
├── skills/legal-*/SKILL.md     — 38 individual skill files
├── agents/legal-*.md           — 12 agent definitions (the panel)
├── mcp-servers/                — Two local MCP servers
│   ├── uk-legislation/src/     — 6 legislation.gov.uk tools
│   └── caselaw/src/            — 10 National Archives judgment tools
├── doc-site/                   — VitePress public docs
├── scripts/
│   ├── generate_legal_pdf.py   — Python PDF report generator (ReportLab)
│   ├── audit_skills.mjs        — 38-skill ↔ 12-agent parity guardrail
│   └── audit_docs.mjs          — Registry ↔ docs parity check
├── samples/                    — Sample legal documents for testing
├── templates/                  — Report templates
├── install.sh                  — Install skills into ~/.claude/
├── uninstall.sh                — Remove installed skills
├── .mcp.json                   — MCP server configuration (uk-legislation · caselaw · lex)
├── CLAUDE.md                   — Project instructions for Claude Code
└── AGENTS.md                   — Mirror of CLAUDE.md for Codex and other AGENTS.md-aware hosts

Component Overview

Agent-Host Skills (legal/, skills/, agents/)

The primary CLI interface. Users run /legal <command> inside Codex, Claude Code, or another compatible agent host, and the orchestrator in legal/SKILL.md routes to the appropriate skill file. Skills are pure markdown prompts -- no compilation, no dependencies, no runtime code. Agents are launched by orchestrator skills for parallel analysis.

INFO

Skills and agents are installed into the configured host directory by running ./install.sh. They are removed with ./uninstall.sh.

MCP Servers (mcp-servers/)

Two TypeScript MCP servers ship with the repo, plus one remote HTTP server. All three are registered in .mcp.json:

Entry	Type	Source	Purpose
uk-legislation	local stdio	mcp-servers/uk-legislation/	6 tools against legislation.gov.uk's XML API — search, lookup, in-force, amendments, extent
caselaw	local stdio	mcp-servers/caselaw/	9 tools against caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk — search, judgment lookup, summarise, by-judge / by-party
lex	remote HTTP	https://lex.lab.i.ai.gov.uk/mcp	63,000+ judgments with semantic search via the National Archives Lex Graph

Scripts (scripts/)

Supporting utilities, primarily generate_legal_pdf.py which generates professional A4 PDF reports using Python's reportlab library. Called by the legal-report-pdf skill.

Samples & Templates (samples/, templates/)

Sample legal documents for testing and development, and report templates used by the PDF generator.

Editing the Skill Surface

Skills and agents are plain markdown, so changes take effect the next time ./install.sh copies them into the host directory:

Change	Affects
Edit skills/legal-review/SKILL.md	The /legal review skill surface
Edit agents/legal-clauses.md	The clause-analysis agent used by the review orchestrator
Edit skills/legal-*/SKILL.md	The corresponding /legal <command> skill

All skills share the same jurisdiction scope (England & Wales) and the canonical register in skills/ — there is no compilation step and no runtime code to rebuild.