How to Contribute

UK Legal Skills is a source-available project licensed under the Functional Source License (FSL-1.1-Apache-2.0). We welcome contributions across every part of the system -- from new legal skills to agent improvements, MCP server tooling, sample documents, and documentation improvements.

Plate I — the broadsheet rebrand.

Plate I.a — the original, kept for reference.

Fork / Branch / PR Workflow

# 1. Fork the repository on GitHub
# 2. Clone your fork
git clone https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/uk-legal-skills.git
cd uk-legal-skills

# 3. Create a feature branch
git checkout -b feat/your-feature-name

# 4. Make your changes, commit, and push
git add .
git commit -m "feat: description of your change"
git push origin feat/your-feature-name

# 5. Open a Pull Request against the main branch

Branch Naming Convention

Use prefixes that describe the type of change:

• feat/ -- new features or skills
• fix/ -- bug fixes
• docs/ -- documentation only
• refactor/ -- code restructuring without behaviour change
• test/ -- adding or updating tests

Areas to Contribute

Area	Description	Key Files / Directories
New Skills	Add a new /legal command for a legal domain not yet covered	skills/legal-*/SKILL.md, legal/SKILL.md
Agent Improvements	Enhance subagent analysis depth, output format, or scoring	agents/legal-*.md
MCP Server Tools	Add legislation or caselaw lookup tools or improve existing ones	mcp-servers/uk-legislation/src/, mcp-servers/caselaw/src/
Documentation	Improve guides, add examples, fix errors	doc-site/
Sample Documents	Add realistic sample legal documents for the evaluation corpus	samples/
Evaluation	Improve scoring against the expected-findings corpus	evaluation/, scripts/
PDF Reports	Enhance the PDF report generator layout and styling	scripts/generate_legal_pdf.py

Ideas for New Skills

• Partnership law (Partnership Act 1890)
• Charity law (Charities Act 2011)
• Planning and construction (CDM Regulations 2015)
• Environmental compliance
• Marine and shipping law
• Insurance contract review (Insurance Act 2015)

Before You Start

1. Check existing issues -- someone may already be working on it
2. Open an issue first for large changes to discuss the approach
3. Read the coding standards -- see Coding Standards for rules that apply to all contributions
4. Run the checks before submitting your PR:

# Skill / agent / router / registry parity
npm run test:skills

# MCP server tests
cd mcp-servers/uk-legislation
npm install
npm test

WARNING

Run npm run test:skills before submitting a PR. It verifies that the 38 skills, 12 agents, the legal/SKILL.md router table, and registry/skill-registry.json all stay in sync, and CI runs the same check.

Pull Request Checklist

Before submitting a PR, verify:

• [ ] Your branch is up to date with main
• [ ] Skill / agent / router / registry parity passes (npm run test:skills)
• [ ] Any MCP server changes have appropriate test coverage
• [ ] Skill files include the standard disclaimer block
• [ ] Jurisdiction is limited to England & Wales only
• [ ] Risk indicators use the standard format (🔴 High Risk, 🟡 Medium Risk, 🟢 Low Risk)
• [ ] Commit messages follow conventional format (feat:, fix:, docs:, etc.)
• [ ] PR description clearly explains what changed and why

Community Guidelines

• Be respectful -- constructive feedback, no personal attacks
• Be specific -- when reporting bugs, include steps to reproduce, expected behaviour, and actual behaviour
• Be patient -- maintainers review PRs as time allows
• Ask questions -- if you are unsure about the right approach, open a discussion
• Credit others -- if your work builds on someone else's contribution, acknowledge it
• Focus feedback on the work, not the person -- all contributions are welcome regardless of experience level
• Welcome newcomers -- help new contributors get started and find their footing

License

This project is source-available under the Functional Source License (FSL-1.1-Apache-2.0). You may use, modify, and redistribute it for any purpose other than building a competing product or hosted service; two years after each release it converts to Apache 2.0. By contributing, you agree your contributions are licensed under the same terms.

Commercial licences (for competing or SaaS use) are available — contact licensing@the-counsel.co.uk.

INFO

All skill files (SKILL.md) and agent files are pure Markdown with no runtime code dependencies. This makes them straightforward to write and review -- no build step is required for skill-only changes.

Quick Links

Guide	Description
Adding Skills	Create a new /legal command
Adding Agents	Create a parallel analysis agent
Coding Standards	Conventions and requirements

Getting Help

• Open a GitHub issue for bugs or feature requests
• Start a GitHub Discussion for questions or design proposals
• Review existing skills in skills/legal-*/SKILL.md for examples of the expected format