Lex Provenance

tests

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, not a generic legislation feed?

Most legal connectors give an AI the current text of a law and a link. This one gives it a verifiable, point-in-time, regime-curated record - the difference between a citation you can defend and a snippet you have to double-check:

• Tamper-evident - every provision carries a SHA-256 content hash you can re-check, not just a URL.
• Point-in-time - dated versions let you cite the law as it stood on a given day, not only "current".
• Structured & neutral - a strict wall between official text and generated content, plus neutral concept tags and cross-references.
• Authentic-language - the official text in its own language is the record; any translation is labelled unofficial, so the binding text is never ambiguous (BBNJ ships all six authentic UN languages).
• Curated by regime - the assembled, verified corpus for a specific body of law (an AML or digital-asset regime), not a firehose of every Act.

It's also corpus-agnostic: one interface over any provenance-first corpus that exposes a standard manifest - three public "global-commons" corpora today, any regime tomorrow. 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.

How verifiable citations work

get_citation returns the SHA-256 hash and dated version of the exact text it cites - so a citation points not at "Article 14" in the abstract but at a specific, reproducible, tamper-checkable state of Article 14. Change one character and the hash changes, so the 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 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.