Matter Kit — provenance-enforced case organization for people litigating without a lawyer — operable by any AI agent.
The public project name is Corpus Open. The code, CLI, and skill stay matter-kit. Live case files never belong in this repository.
Matter Kit turns a folder of case files into a matter: hashed, tamper-evident
source documents plus a structured store where every substantive assertion is
either traceable to a document/page/timecode or visibly flagged UNSUPPORTED.
It renders layered counsel packets (30-second / 3-minute / 15-minute diligence
views), tracks deadlines with confidence labels, and exposes everything to
Hermes, Claude Desktop, Codex, or any MCP client through a zero-dependency
stdio MCP server.
Nothing here files, sends, or contacts anyone. Sources are never modified. This is legal-organization software, not a lawyer and not legal advice.
AI-drafted court filings without verifiable provenance are generating sanctions at scale (1,500+ documented cases of fabricated citations by mid-2026), and self-represented litigants are the fastest-growing segment of that problem. Meanwhile, lawyers decline meritorious cases from self-represented people mostly because evaluating them costs hours of unpaid diligence. Matter Kit attacks both: work product that survives hostile scrutiny, and counsel packets built to be evaluated in minutes.
python3 matter.py init ~/cases/my-case
python3 matter.py ingest ~/cases/my-case # hash + register every file
python3 matter.py verify ~/cases/my-case # re-hash; non-zero exit on any drift
matter_fact=$(python3 matter.py fact add ~/cases/my-case \
--text "Property records show plaintiff owns both parcels" \
--status DOCUMENTED-FACT --source "Evidence/EVIDENCE_INVENTORY.md@Tier 1 #6")
python3 matter.py packet ~/cases/my-case --layer 3min --out COUNSEL_PACKET.md{ "mcpServers": { "matter": { "command": "python3",
"args": ["/path/to/matter-kit/matter-mcp.py"],
"env": { "MATTER_DIR": "/absolute/path/to/case-dir" } } } }Tools: matter.status · matter.fact_add · matter.fact_list ·
matter.deadline_list · matter.packet_render · matter.cite_extract.
python3 matter.py cite extract ~/cases/my-case Evidence/complaint.txt # local parse; offsets keyed to the parsed text's sha256
python3 matter.py cite list ~/cases/my-case --status extraction-failed # unparsed fragments, first-class, never dropped
python3 matter.py stage ~/cases/my-case auth_xxx source-checked \
--via "courtlistener:id=123" --evidence "DL #123 text matches; still good law as of 2026-09-08"Stages: unverified → resolved → (research-pending) → source-checked /
stale-flagged. Transitions are validated — a check status without a resolved
source, or evidence-free "checked," is refused. These tokens mean a defined
source was checked, never this is correct law.
Adapters (network search) ship in later releases and require an explicit
grant in .matter/consent.json — issued by a human (kind: "human"),
naming its authorized callers; agent-authored grants are inert proposals.
R1 ships zero adapters and the kit makes no network calls.
See rfcs/0001-provider-neutral-search-adapters.md.
skills/matter-kit/SKILL.md teaches agents the operating discipline: the five
epistemic labels, media-before-strategy rule, citation-verification habit,
date-discrepancy preservation, and the folder taxonomy. Copy or symlink it into
your agent's skill directory:
ln -s /path/to/matter-kit/skills/matter-kit ~/.hermes/skills/matter-kit- Plain files + SQLite. No server, no lock-in; any agent can read the store.
- Sources immutable. Everything derivable lives in
.matter/; originals never change. - Labels are enforced, not suggested. Unsupported assertions render
[UNSUPPORTED]. - Read-mostly MCP. Agents register facts and render packets; humans act.
- Adverse facts are first-class. A packet that hides them is worthless and dishonest.
v0.1 — dogfooding stage. Schema may change; hashing is stable.
License: Apache-2.0. Not affiliated with any bar association; nothing here is legal advice or a substitute for a licensed attorney.
Built while running Corpus. The kit is free and local;
optional law.* search against Corpus is the only paid hook, never required
to organize a matter.