CanLII MCP Server

A local Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for macOS that lets Claude Desktop search the CanLII Canadian legal database and read the full text of matching documents.

What it does

Exposes a single MCP tool — search_canlii — that Claude can call to:

1. Search CanLII using either full-text or case-name search
2. Fetch the full text of the top matching documents
3. Return cleaned plain text (no HTML markup) back to Claude

Tool reference

search_canlii(
    query: str,
    search_type: "text" | "name" = "text",
    max_results: int = 5   # 1–10
)

search_type	When to use
"text"	Legal concepts, keywords, or phrases within judgment bodies
"name"	Case name, document title, file number, author, or citation (e.g. R v Oakes, 2024 SCC 12)

Requirements

• macOS
• Python 3.11+
• uv — Python package manager
• Claude Desktop

Installation

1. Clone the repository

git clone <repo-url>
cd canlii_mcp_server

2. Install dependencies and Chromium

uv sync
uv run playwright install chromium

3. Add the server to Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "canlii": {
      "command": "/path/to/uv",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "--project",
        "/path/to/canlii_mcp_server",
        "canlii-mcp-server"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Replace /path/to/uv with the output of which uv, and /path/to/canlii_mcp_server with the absolute path to this directory.

4. Restart Claude Desktop

Fully quit Claude Desktop (menu bar → Quit), then reopen it. The canlii server will appear under Settings → Developer.

Usage

In a Claude Desktop conversation:

"Search CanLII for cases about reasonable apprehension of bias."

"Find the case R v Oakes."

"What does CanLII say about the duty to accommodate in employment law?"

Claude will call search_canlii automatically with the appropriate search_type.

How it works

CanLII's website is a JavaScript single-page application — search results are rendered client-side and not available in raw HTML. This server uses Playwright (headless Chromium) to load pages as a real browser would, then extracts clean text with BeautifulSoup.

playwright-stealth is applied to each page load to reduce the likelihood of bot detection by CanLII's DataDome protection. Requests are rate-limited to 1.5 seconds between document fetches to avoid triggering blocks.

Note: CanLII's bot protection may occasionally flag automated requests. If Claude reports a "blocked" error, wait an hour and try again.

Development

Run unit tests

uv run pytest tests/ --ignore=tests/test_smoke.py -v

Run live integration tests (requires network access to canlii.org)

uv run pytest tests/test_smoke.py -v -s

Project structure

src/canlii_mcp_server/
    server.py   — MCP server entry point, tool registration
    search.py   — URL builder, search results parser
    fetch.py    — document text extractor, Playwright browser manager
tests/
    test_url_builder.py        — URL building (5 tests)
    test_search_parser.py      — search results parsing (4 tests)
    test_document_extractor.py — document text extraction (5 tests)
    test_smoke.py              — live integration tests (3 tests, manual)
    fixtures/                  — saved CanLII HTML used by unit tests
scripts/
    recon.py           — captures CanLII HTML structure for fixture updates
    recon_document.py  — captures a single document page slowly

Limitations

• No full-text API: CanLII does not provide an API that returns document text — only metadata. Playwright scraping is the only viable approach.
• Bot detection: CanLII uses DataDome. Occasional temporary blocks are possible.
• No noteup search: CanLII's "Noteup/Discussion" search requires a document path as input rather than a free-text query. This search type is not currently supported.
• English only: The server searches the English index (indexLang=en).

License

MIT