RAG-grounded German legal research with verified citations + a closed-beta workflow tier for law firms.
Solo-built by Mikel Ninh in Berlin · open source under AGPL-3.0 · in active pilot with a Berlin migration-law firm (May 2026)
| Citizen app (free) | gitlaw-xi.vercel.app · gitlaw.app |
| Pro tier (closed beta) | /#/pro — invite-only |
| Wiki | Home · Architecture · Features · Legal & Privacy · Development · Roadmap |
| For recruiters | portfolio.html — JD requirements mapped 1:1 to code paths |
| Conventions | AGENTS.md · CLAUDE.md · CHANGELOG.md |
5,936 German federal laws indexed paragraph-level, queryable via fuzzy + semantic search. AI-generated explanations for the 112 most-asked paragraphs, in plain German. Every AI answer is citation-verified against the local corpus — 53/53 hand-labelled eval cases pass in CI. 94K-node citation graph lets users navigate from one § to all related ones in one click.
For lawyers, GitLaw Pro is a mandate workflow tier: 11 Mandatsart-Checklisten with 108 curated Pflicht-Items, 8-state Workflow with transition rules, 32 Sachstand-Templates Deutsch+Vietnamese, OCR-Drop-Zone with auto-rename, branded PDF/Word export, signed Pro-Sessions with 5-Rollen-RBAC, frankfurt-only hosting, full audit log.
| Federal laws indexed | 5,936 (1.3M lines of legal text) |
| Paragraphs (graph nodes) | 94,178 |
| Cross-references (graph edges) | 200,464 (199K intra-law · 1,163 cross-law) |
| FAISS vectors | 98,367 |
| Citizen letter templates | 20 (16 free · 4 premium) |
| Pro letter templates | 59 (Notariat · Migration · Familie · Sozial · Steuer · allgemein) |
| Pro Sachstand-Templates | 32 (8 Stati × Mandant/Mittelsperson × DE/VI) |
| Curated BGH/BVerfG-Leitsätze | 40 zu Top-30 §§ |
| Live-Rechtsprechungs-Index | 150K+ Urteile via OpenLegalData |
| Citation eval (CI) | 53/53 cases · 100% pass-rate |
| Languages | 6 citizen (DE/Leichte Sprache/TR/AR/EN/UK) · 5 Pro-Intake (DE/VI/TR/AR/EN, RTL für Arabisch) |
| Updates | weekly auto-update (laws + Leitsätze via GitHub Action) |
Free, donations-funded, no account needed.
- 🔍 Search 5,936 laws — hybrid retrieval, BM25 for exact paragraph matches + FAISS for semantic similarity (98K vectors)
- 💡 AI-explained paragraphs — 112 §§ in plain German, generated with OpenAI structured outputs, cached on disk
- 💬 Chat with follow-up questions — personalized for 12 user profiles
- 🛡 Anti-hallucination badges —
✓ verified/⚠ unknown/🚨 superseded. Recognises range markers (§§ 2 bis 3f weggefallencovers § 3 NetzDG) - 🔗 Verwandte Paragraphen — citation-graph drawer per cited § (94K nodes / 200K edges)
- 📝 20 letter templates — Widerruf Online-Kauf · Kündigung Mietvertrag · Einspruch Bußgeld · Widerspruch Nebenkosten · DSGVO-Auskunft · etc.
- 📰 Gesetz des Tages + Reform-Diffs — daily highlight, week-old changes
- ♿ A11y — A-/A+ text, darkmode, keyboard navigation, theme buttons over typing
- 🌍 6 UI languages with on-the-fly answer translation
| Template | Searches/Mo |
|---|---|
| 🛒 Widerruf Online-Kauf | 40K |
| 🔧 Reklamation | 25K |
| 🏠 Kündigung Mietvertrag | 22K |
| 🚗 Einspruch Bußgeld | 20K |
| 💧 Widerspruch Nebenkosten | 18K |
| + 15 more | 150K+ |
Separate route at /#/pro, invite-token-gated, currently in active pilot.
| Area | Functionality |
|---|---|
| Mandant:innen-Akten | CRUD with §§ 187/188 BGB Frist-Tracker, auto-Frist after § 75 VwVfG, mandate-typed checklists, status workflow |
| 11 Mandatsart-Checklisten (Sprint 1) | 108 curated Pflicht-Items · status per item · "only missing required"-filter · Item-Description per item explains why needed |
| 8-Stati-Workflow (Sprint 1) | unterlagen_fehlen → antrag_in_vorbereitung → antrag_eingereicht → behoerdliche_rueckmeldung_ausstehend → behoerde_nachforderung → termin_steht_aus → verfahren_abgeschlossen, with transition rules |
| Sachstand-Generator DE+VI (Sprint 1) | 32 templates auto-filled with Mandantenname, Behörde, Aktenzeichen, Frist · Mandant ↔ Mittelsperson toggle · DE ↔ VI toggle |
| Behörden-Combobox (Sprint 1) | 17 Berliner migration agencies pre-filled (LEA, BAMF, VG Berlin, Botschaften Vietnam) |
| Heute-Widget (Sprint 1) | Dashboard top: deadlines ≤14 days, Behörden-Rückfragen, missing required docs, red Eilantrag-Eskalation for 7-day cases |
| OCR-Drop-Zone (Sprint 1) | PDF text-layer + OpenAI Vision for scans · keyword-match suggestions with DE/EN/VI aliases · auto-rename Reisepass_Mandant_2026-05-06.pdf · readability hint |
| Tasks pro Akte (Modul D) (Sprint 1) | Auto-generation on status changes · 7 task types · "Behörde nachfassen 14 days after Antrag eingereicht" etc. |
| Akte-Zusammenfassung (Sprint 1) | LLM summary with §14-tabu prompt — explicitly forbids Erfolgsprognosen, strategic decisions, contested authority/court communication |
| Recherche with 3-tier evidence | KI-Antwort with verified citations + (1) curated BGH/BVerfG-Leitsätze (40) · (2) live OpenLegalData (150K+ Urteile) · (3) deep-links Beck/dejure/openjur |
| Anti-hallucination badges | Same verifier as citizen-tier · 53/53 eval cases passing in CI |
| Word + branded PDF export | Editable .docx with Briefkopf · PDF with verification status per citation · disclaimer footer |
| 5-Rollen-RBAC (Sprint 1) | Owner / Paralegal (Refa) / Assistant (Hilfskraft) / Member / Viewer · scope-restricted per role |
| DSGVO-Schutz-Modus | 14 PII-pattern anonymizer + 50-token whitelist before any LLM call |
| CSV-Akten-Import | DATEV / RA-Micro / advoware / Excel auto-column-detection |
| Cloud-Sync | Tenant-bound, signed Pro-Session, Upstash Frankfurt |
| Audit-Log | Lückenlos, BHV-tauglich PDF export |
| Mehrsprachiges Intake-Formular | DE/VI/TR/AR/EN with triage block (Dringlichkeit + Frist + Anhang-Metadaten) |
| AVV-Vorlagen-Generator | Auf eigenem Briefkopf |
Built between 2026-04-29 (Lastenheft received from pilot lawyer) and 2026-05-06 (today's pilot meeting). 88% of MVP requirements live, 100% by end of May. See CHANGELOG.md and wiki/Features for the full liste.
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The full corpus + citation verification is exposed as a Model Context Protocol server — Claude Desktop, Cursor, Continue, or your own agent can call GitLaw tools natively.
# An LLM calls verify_citation("§ 999 StGB")
{
"verified": false,
"reason": "paragraph_not_found",
"law": { "name": "Strafgesetzbuch", "abbreviation": "StGB" },
"hint": "StGB exists, but '§ 999' was not found."
}Six tools:
search_laws— FAISS retrieval (98K vectors)verify_citation— anti-hallucination with structured failure modeslookup_paragraph— exact §-text retrievallist_laws— corpus enumeration (4,852 abbreviations)find_related_paragraphs— citation-graph traversalhybrid_search— vector + graph combined
Plus the resource gitlaw://law/{abbr} for full law texts.
Three deploy paths:
- stdio local — Claude Desktop / Cursor / own agents (setup)
- HTTP/SSE on Fly.io Frankfurt — push-to-deploy (
fly.toml) - AWS ECS Fargate via Terraform — VPC + ALB + EFS + Secrets Manager + Autoscaling (
deploy/aws/)
Demo without an API key: python -m gitlaw_mcp.demo
| Layer | Stack |
|---|---|
| Frontend | React 19 + TypeScript + Vite + Tailwind 4, HashRouter, react-router-dom 7 |
| Citizen RAG | LangChain + FAISS + BM25 hybrid retrieval, OpenAI Embeddings (text-embedding-3-small) |
| Pro AI | OpenAI gpt-4o-mini with JSON-Schema structured outputs |
| Pro backend | Vercel Serverless Functions + Upstash Redis (Frankfurt) + signed Pro sessions (HMAC-SHA256) |
| Citation verification | Local lookup against 5,936 markdown files (### § N heading match) |
| Knowledge graph | 94K paragraphs + 200K cross-references, sharded per-law as JSON |
| MCP transport | stdio (local) + SSE (Fly.io) + ECS Fargate (AWS) |
| PDF / Word | jsPDF (branded templates) + docx (editable export) |
| Anonymizer | 14 regex PII patterns + 50 whitelist tokens |
| Updates | GitHub Actions (weekly law + Leitsatz refresh via OpenAI structured outputs) |
| Hosting | GitHub Pages (citizen) + Vercel + Upstash Frankfurt (Pro + APIs) |
| Observability | JSON-structured logs per MCP tool call (request_id, latency_ms, status) — Datadog/Loki/Sentry-ready |
| LLM gateway | Central api/_llm.ts with retries (408/429/5xx), exponential backoff + jitter, Retry-After parsing, Zod schema validation, LLMValidationError for schema mismatches vs. provider outages |
| Cost tracking | Per-request usage (model, tokens, USD) logged to llm_usage table; aggregated views at /api/admin/costs for tenant-level dashboards |
| RAG eval | evals/run_rag_eval.py — Retrieval@k + LLM-as-judge (faithfulness + relevance) on the citizen Q&A set |
# Citizen viewer
cd viewer && npm install && npm run dev
# → http://localhost:5173
# Pro tier (same dev server, different route)
# → http://localhost:5173/#/pro?invite=DEMO
# API (Vercel functions, requires OPENAI_API_KEY in .env.local)
npx vercel devFull setup details: wiki/Development.
- Hosting durchgängig EU/Frankfurt: Vercel + Upstash + Resend (planned)
- DSGVO-Anonymizer before every LLM call (14 PII patterns + whitelist)
- OpenAI no-training: org-setting +
X-No-Trainheader - Audit-Log: lückenlos, BHV-tauglich PDF export
- Berufsgeheimnis (§ 43a BRAO): architectural lock — no auto-send, every PDF has disclaimer footer
- AVV templates for Mikel ↔ pilot firm and pilot firm ↔ clients
GitLaw is a research and template tool. AI-generated answers and letters do not replace legal advice. Every output requires Anwält:in review before use.
Full privacy concept and external-audit recommendations: wiki/Legal-and-Privacy.
- 5,936 laws indexed · 98K vectors · semantic search
- AI-explained paragraphs (112 §§) · 12 user profiles · 6 languages
- 20 citizen letter templates · 59 Pro templates (6 packs)
- 3-tier Rechtsprechung (deep-links · 40 curated BGH/BVerfG-Leitsätze · OpenLegalData live)
- GitLaw Pro Beta — Akten · verified research · branded templates · Frist-Calc · Cloud-Sync · AVV
- Migration-MVP Sprint 1 (May 2026) — 11 Mandatsart-Checklisten · 8-Stati-Workflow · Sachstand-Generator DE+VI · Behörden-DB · OCR-Drop-Zone · Tasks · 5-Rollen-RBAC · Akte-Zusammenfassung
- MCP Server — 6 tools · 3 deploy paths · 53/53 citation eval passing
- Sprint 2 (June 2026) — Auto-Erinnerungs-Engine · Refa-Freigabe · Resend EU integration
- Sprint 3 (July 2026) — Semantic OCR with gpt-4o-vision · Confidence-Scores · Background workers for large PDFs
- Sprint 4 (August 2026) — Mittelsperson data model · Vollmachts-Validierung · Magic-Link-Auth
- Phase 4 (Q4 2026) — Mandanten-Portal · external Pen-Test
- External DSGVO audit before productive scaling
- Azure OpenAI EU-Region for Großkanzlei AVV requirements
Full roadmap: wiki/Roadmap.
This project is part of an open-source ecosystem for digital democracy:
| Project | Question | Link |
|---|---|---|
| FairEint | What should Germany do differently? | github.com/mikelninh/faireint · Live |
| GitLaw | What does the law actually say? | github.com/mikelninh/gitlaw · Live |
| Public Money Mirror | Where is the tax money going? | github.com/mikelninh/Public-Money-Mirror |
| SafeVoice | Who is being attacked online? | github.com/mikelninh/safevoice |
All projects: github.com/mikelninh · Support: Ko-fi · GitHub Sponsors
AGPL-3.0 for the entire repository.
AGPL closes the SaaS loophole: anyone offering this software as a network service must publish their changes under the same license. For a legal-tech tool that protects long-term openness — nobody can take this code and ship it as a closed commercial fork.
Commercial license without AGPL copyleft obligations: mikel_ninh@yahoo.de.
- Operator: Mikel Ninh, Berlin · mikel_ninh@yahoo.de
- Beta access GitLaw Pro: same e-mail
- Job applications / portfolio context:
portfolio.html— JD requirements mapped 1:1 to code paths
„Demokratie sollte Open Source sein."