# Counsel workspace

> Counsel workspace is a free, Apache-2.0, self-hosted legal workspace for
> contract review, legal research, drafting, workflows and matter collaboration.
> It runs on a laptop or a small server. There is no hosted service, seat fee,
> telemetry or mandatory model API. Optional local Ollama or bring-your-own
> model generation is available but disabled by default.

Canonical site: https://mehbul.github.io/counsel-workspace/
Source: https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace
License: Apache License 2.0
Version: 0.2.0, 28 October 2026

## Start here

- [README](https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace#readme): mission,
  quickstart, feature table, screenshots, comparison, limits and license.
- [Deployment and operations](https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/blob/main/docs/OPERATIONS.md):
  Docker Compose, TLS, owner setup, members, matter grants, backup and restore.
- [HTTPS deployment](https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/blob/main/docs/DEPLOYMENT.md):
  the end-to-end TLS recipe, proxy trust boundary, deployment verification
  command and pre-launch acceptance checklist.
- [OCR setup and limits](https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/blob/main/docs/OCR.md):
  installing Tesseract and Poppler, enabling extraction and its bounds.
- [Security policy](https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/blob/main/SECURITY.md):
  reporting, supported versions, security boundaries and residual risk.
- [Threat model](https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/blob/main/docs/THREAT-MODEL.md):
  assets, trust boundaries, actors, mitigations and operator checklist.
- [Verification and release status](https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/blob/main/docs/VERIFICATION.md):
  what is tested locally and in CI, and what is not established.
- [Legal evaluation](https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/blob/main/docs/LEGAL-EVALUATION.md):
  CUAD method, document-disjoint split and measured limits.
- [Matter archives](https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/blob/main/docs/MATTER-ARCHIVE.md):
  archive layout, access rules, checksums, the offline verifier and the
  owner-only restore policy.
- [Assistant and MCP setup](https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/blob/main/docs/ASSISTANTS.md):
  stdio and HTTP MCP, scopes, connection files and client configuration.
- [Product facts](https://mehbul.github.io/counsel-workspace/product.json):
  machine-readable capabilities, requirements, licensing and exclusions.
- [Changelog](https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md):
  release notes and known limitations.

## What it does

- Personal mode for one trusted computer, with loopback-only access and synthetic
  seed data.
- Team mode with owner-created accounts, Argon2 password hashing, revocable
  sessions, CSRF and origin checks, rate limits and owner/editor/viewer/guest
  roles.
- Matters, PDF/DOCX/TXT/MD/CSV import, original-file retention, page and paragraph
  anchors, and opt-in local OCR for scanned pages when the operator installs
  Tesseract and Poppler.
- Matter-scoped ranked passage search, deterministic clause anchors, optional
  semantic candidates and conservative abstention.
- Review tables with evidence inspection, editable findings, locks, status,
  filtering, sorting, pagination and CSV export.
- Document comparisons, highlighted changes, CSV export, DOCX revision export
  and tracked insertions through an Office bridge.
- Rich-text drafts, comments, checkpoints, proposed edits and DOCX export.
- Reusable instructions, versioned workflow templates, approval gates, durable
  runs, retries, cancellation and schedules.
- Intake tracking, document monitors and follow-up tasks.
- Guest-only client portal with explicit publication and immediate revocation.
- US Federal Register research and eCFR imports with official-origin pinning,
  bounded requests and publication watches.
- Owner-only encrypted notification channels for signed webhooks, Slack and
  Microsoft Teams, with durable retries and receipts.
- Matter archives with a manifest, SHA-256SUMS, readable source text, structured
  records, an owner audit subset, optional originals and an offline verifier.
- Owner-only archive restore: verification runs before any write, identifier
  collisions fail closed unless `newIds=1` requests a remap, and restored
  execution state never resumes (queued jobs restore as failed, schedules and
  watches restore disabled, non-terminal runs restore as cancelled, audit rows
  are not restored).
- MCP integration for scoped evidence reading and host-authored drafts, reviews
  and tasks, with expiring and revocable keys.
- Optional local Ollama, OpenAI-compatible, Anthropic and OpenAI generation.
- Docker Compose deployment, hardened-container CI checks, online backup and
  restore documentation.

## What it does not do

- No OCR is preinstalled or cloud-based. Scanned PDFs need separately installed
  local Tesseract and Poppler tools, explicitly enabled by the operator.
- No SSO, SCIM, MFA or enterprise directory integration.
- No iManage or NetDocuments adapter, provider ACL sync or ethical-wall mapping.
- No archive encryption, signature or notarization. Restore is owner-only and
  documented with an explicit no-side-effects policy.
- No multi-instance or high-availability mode.
- No independent security audit, penetration test or legal review.
- No guarantee of legal accuracy.
- No blinded legal-quality comparison with Legora or any commercial product.
- No live Slack or Teams tenant acceptance.
- No legal advice or attorney-client relationship.

## Quickstart

Personal mode, requires Node.js 24.15 or newer:

```sh
git clone https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace.git
cd counsel-workspace
npm ci
npm run start:personal
```

Open http://127.0.0.1:3000. Personal mode is for one trusted computer and
operating-system account. It is not a way to share confidential material over a
network.

Team mode with Docker:

```sh
cp .env.example .env
# Set DOMAIN in .env
docker compose --env-file .env up -d --build
```

On first run, create the owner with the one-time token in
`data/bootstrap-token`. Put the app behind HTTPS. Tagged releases publish
`ghcr.io/mehbul/counsel-workspace`.

## Verification

- `npm test` covers authentication, authorization, CSRF, matter isolation,
  import, citations, review, comparisons, drafting, collaboration, workflows,
  portal access, notifications, archives and DOCX export.
- `npm run benchmark` reports 100% hit@3 and 0 false positives on a synthetic
  suite designed alongside the implementation. It is a regression check, not
  held-out evidence.
- The clause engine scored 33.98% answerable-only token F1 and 77.05%
  answerability balanced accuracy on a document-disjoint CUAD validation split.
  This is not a legal-accuracy guarantee.
- GitHub Actions runs the test suite, build, format check, dependency audit,
  Caddyfile validation, opt-in real-OCR extraction checks, Docker build and a
  hardened-container smoke test.

## Licensing and trademark

The project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. It is not affiliated with,
endorsed by or sponsored by Legora or any other commercial legal-AI provider.
"Legora" is a trademark of its respective owner.

## Contact

- Issues: https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/issues
- Security reports: https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/security/advisories/new
- Releases: https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/releases