@ansvar/belgian-law-mcp

Belgian Law MCP Server

Production-grade MCP server for Belgian legislation with a read-only SQLite backend, contract tests, drift detection anchors, and deployment automation.

What It Provides

• Full-text legal search over Belgian provisions (FTS5 + BM25 ranking)
• Provision retrieval by statute and article reference
• Citation parsing, formatting, and validation for Belgian citation forms
• Currency checks (current + as-of-date support)
• EU cross-reference tooling (basis, implementations, provision mapping, compliance checks)
• Metadata/provenance introspection via about

Current Dataset (Bundled)

• Legal documents: ~5,775
• Legal provisions: ~142,743
• Primary source: Justel
• Jurisdiction: Belgium (FR/NL)

Quick Start

Local stdio

npm ci
npm run build
npm start

Or run directly in development mode:

npm run dev

HTTP / Vercel

• MCP endpoint: /mcp
• Health endpoint: /health
• Version endpoint: /version

vercel.json rewrites:

• /mcp -> /api/mcp
• /health -> /api/health
• /version -> /api/health?version

Available Tools

• search_legislation
• get_provision
• validate_citation
• build_legal_stance
• format_citation
• check_currency
• get_eu_basis
• get_belgian_implementations
• search_eu_implementations
• get_provision_eu_basis
• validate_eu_compliance
• about

Environment Variables

• BELGIAN_LAW_DB_PATH - Optional override for database file path
• MAX_DB_AGE_DAYS - Optional freshness threshold for check-updates (default 30)
• UPDATE_CHECK_YEARS - Optional number of years checked by check-updates (default 2)

Build, Test, and Quality Gates

Build

npm run build

Full test suite (unit + integration + contract)

npm test

Coverage

npm run test:coverage

Contract tests only

npm run test:contract

Nightly contract mode (enables network assertions):

CONTRACT_MODE=nightly npm run test:contract

Golden Tests and Drift Detection

Contract fixture file

• fixtures/golden-tests.json

Drift anchor file

• fixtures/golden-hashes.json

Run drift detection

npm run drift:detect

Notes:

• Entries with expected_sha256 = COMPUTE_ON_FIRST_RUN are intentionally skipped.
• Populate hashes before enforcing drift alerts in production.

Data Freshness and Auto-Updates

Check for source updates

npm run check-updates

Exit codes:

• 0: No updates detected
• 1: Updates detected
• 2: Source/check errors

Manual refresh flow

npm run ingest -- --year-start 2025 --year-end 2026 --phase all --lang both
npm run build:db
npm test

Deployment (Vercel)

Required secrets for GitHub Actions deployment workflow

• VERCEL_TOKEN
• VERCEL_ORG_ID
• VERCEL_PROJECT_ID

Local Vercel CLI flow

npx vercel pull --yes --environment=preview
npx vercel build
npx vercel deploy --prebuilt

Production:

npx vercel pull --yes --environment=production
npx vercel build --prod
npx vercel deploy --prebuilt --prod

GitHub Automation Included

• CI (.github/workflows/ci.yml)
• Drift Detection (.github/workflows/drift-detect.yml)
• Daily Data Freshness Check + Optional Auto-Update PR (.github/workflows/check-updates.yml)
• Vercel Deployment (.github/workflows/vercel-deploy.yml)
• Publish Package (.github/workflows/publish.yml)
• Dependabot (.github/dependabot.yml)

Source Attribution and Legal Notice

• Legal text is derived from Belgian Justel open data and related official legal sources.
• This project does not provide legal advice.
• For legal certainty, verify against official publications.

License

Apache-2.0