Philippine Legal & Compliance MCP — ph-compliance-mcp

The source-of-truth retrieval layer for Philippine law and compliance, over Model Context Protocol (MCP). Statutes · Jurisprudence · Government Issuances (NGA / LGU / GOCC) — retrieval-grounded, citation-verified, version-aware, provenance-checked. Never a guesser.

ph-compliance-mcp gives any MCP-capable agent (Claude, OpenCode, Cline, and others) grounded, citable answers about Philippine law and regulatory compliance — instead of an LLM's parametric (and frequently wrong) recollection of PH law.

• Legal: 1987 Constitution, Civil Code, Revised Penal Code, Labor Code, Family Code, Rules of Court, and the full body of Republic Acts, Presidential Decrees, and Executive Orders.
• Compliance & business: corporate/commercial law, transactional and contracts, accounting & auditing, payroll & benefits (SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG, 13th month pay), and human-resources/workplace compliance (DOLE).
• Government issuances: memorandums and circulars of National Government Agencies (NGA), Local Government Unit (LGU) issuances and ordinances, and Government-Owned and Controlled Corporation (GOCC) rules.
• Jurisprudence: Supreme Court and appellate decisions, with a citations knowledge graph connecting cases and statutes.

⚠️ Not legal advice. This is an information-retrieval and citation layer, not a lawyer, judge, or source of legal counsel. See DISCLAIMER.md.

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Why this MCP stands out

Capability	ph-compliance-mcp	Typical PH-law MCPs
Corpus provenance	SHA-256 checksums per asset, verified on load; refuses on mismatch	Often static bundled snapshots
Version-aware law	valid_from/valid_until provisions + amendments log; show_amendments, show_history tools	Current-text only
Citations knowledge graph	related_laws, related_cases, show_dependencies, show_citations — only resolved edges	None
No-synthesis guarantee	Below confidence threshold → insufficient_corpus_coverage, never a guess	Varies
Coverage breadth	Laws + cases + NGA/LGU/GOCC issuances across 15 compliance domains	Statutes only, typically
Freshness signal	list_domains reports corpus refresh timestamps per domain	None

See docs/marketplace/mcpmarket.md for the full competitive positioning, and the research-backed source list in docs/sources.md.

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Quick start

Requirements

• Node.js 24+ (pnpm recommended)

Install (local stdio MCP server)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ph-compliance": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "github:nicene-software/ph-compliance-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Corpus assets (laws/cases/issuances SQLite + .sha256 checksums) download and verify on first run, cached under ~/.cache/ph-compliance-mcp.

Run from source

pnpm install
pnpm dev            # stdio server (tsx)
pnpm inspector      # MCP Inspector UI

Build the corpus from seed data

The repository ships a version-controlled seed corpus (data/seed/*.jsonl — 20 statutes, 4 agency issuances, 3 landmark cases across all 15 compliance domains), authored from primary sources by scripts/generate-seed.mjs:

pnpm seed            # regenerate data/seed/*.jsonl (idempotent)
pnpm build:corpus    # build dist/corpus from data/seed (defaults)

The golden eval gate (pnpm eval:all) is passable against this seed: every golden QA pair's plan retrieves its answer from the seeded corpus, and tests/golden/dataset-coverage.test.ts locks that seed↔golden coupling so it cannot silently drift.

The [citations] pass then populates the knowledge graph (--no-citations to skip). Live ingestion from official sources (CI-only, robots-respecting, throttled):

pnpm build:corpus -- --sources official-gazette,lawphil --out dist/corpus

Every instrument is catalogued first (data-pipeline/catalog.ts, 40+ instruments across all 15 domains); adapters only fetch what the catalog declares — nothing is ingested that isn't catalogued, and nothing is ever fabricated.

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Tools

Tool	Purpose
search_statute	Full-text search over statutes/provisions (FTS5/BM25, confidence-gated)
get_provision	Retrieve one provision with citation + source
search_jurisprudence	Full-text search over case decisions
get_case	Retrieve a case with passages and citation
search_issuance	Search government issuances (NGA/LGU/GOCC)
get_issuance	Retrieve one issuance
cite_validate	Validate/parse a Philippine citation
list_domains	15-domain taxonomy + corpus freshness
related_laws	Statutes cited by a case (graph)
related_cases	Cases sharing cited statutes (graph)
show_amendments	Amendment log of a statute
show_history	Version history of a provision
show_dependencies	Law→law dependency edges
show_citations	Citations made by a case
show_implementing_rules	IRR references for a statute
show_cross_references	Domain cross-references + graph edges
compute_prescription	Deterministic prescriptive-period calculator (Civil Code Arts. 1144–1149)
compute_deadline	Deterministic filing-deadline calculator (Rules of Court Rule 22 + 37/41/45/65)
compute_13th_month	Deterministic 13th-month-pay calculator (PD 851)

Resources

• ph-compliance://domains — taxonomy + freshness
• ph-compliance://statute/{statute} — statute metadata + provision list

---

Coverage: 15 compliance domains

Domain	Key instruments
Constitutional	1987 Constitution
Civil	Civil Code (RA 386)
Family	Family Code (EO 209)
Criminal	Revised Penal Code (Act 3815), special penal laws
Tax	National Internal Revenue Code (RA 8424), BIR issuances
Labor	Labor Code (PD 442)
Commercial/Corporate	Revised Corporation Code (RA 11232), SRC
Business & Transactional	Contracts, sales, agency, Negotiable Instruments (Act 2031), EODB (RA 11032)
Accounting & Auditing	Accountancy Act (RA 9298), PFRS, COA audit rules
Payroll & Benefits	13th month pay (PD 851), SSS (RA 11199), PhilHealth (RA 11223), Pag-IBIG (RA 9679)
HR & Workplace Compliance	Labor Code standards, OSH (RA 11058), DOLE issuances
Remedial	Rules of Court
Administrative	Administrative Code (EO 292), civil-service rules, NGA memorandums
Local Government	Local Government Code (RA 7160), LGU issuances
Special/Cross-cutting	Data Privacy Act (RA 10173), EODB, consumer protection (RA 7394)

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AI agent integrations

ph-compliance-mcp is a standard stdio MCP server — connect any MCP-capable AI coding agent. Client-specific setup (as of August 2026):

Client	Config	Guide
Claude Code	.mcp.json / claude mcp add	docs/agents/claude-code.md
OpenAI Codex CLI	config.toml / codex mcp add	docs/agents/codex.md
OpenCode	opencode.json mcp block	docs/agents/opencode.md
Cline (VS Code)	mcp_settings.json	docs/agents/cline.md
Cursor	.cursor/mcp.json / cursor mcp add	docs/agents/cursor.md

The universal config (any client): command node, args ["/abs/path/ph-compliance-mcp/dist/src/server.js"]. See docs/agents/README.md. Each tool returns BOTH human-readable text and machine-parseable structuredContent, so agents can use results in downstream automation.

Use cases

From contract review and employment compliance to tax, payroll, procurement, litigation deadlines, and NGA/LGU/GOCC issuance research — see docs/usecases.md for ready-to-paste prompts across all 15 domains.

Enterprise

Shared/verified corpus deployment, air-gapped operation, hardening, an operations runbook, and a legal-review workflow: see docs/enterprise.md. The eval harness (pnpm eval) is the release gate — see evals/README.md. Security and contribution policies: SECURITY.md, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.

Docker

A multi-stage Dockerfile ships a slim runtime image (no build toolchain, no ports — MCP over stdio) with a built-in HEALTHCHECK and pre-wired air-gapped corpus mount (PH_COMPLIANCE_LOCAL_CORPUS=/corpus):

docker build -t ph-compliance-mcp .
docker compose up --build -d     # see compose.yaml

Operations & releases

• docs/operations.md — post-production runbook: monitoring (pnpm healthcheck, pnpm check:freshness), backup/restore, upgrades, incident response, disaster recovery, weekly maintenance cadence.
• docs/release.md — code (v0.9.0) vs corpus (corpus-YYYY.MM.DD) versioning, release gates (eval is release-blocking), rollback, post-release checklist.
• docs/governance.md — contribution model: branch protection, CODEOWNERS mandatory reviews, Dependabot, CI/release gates.
• Corpus builds are version-stamped: build-index.ts writes manifest.json (per-corpus SHA-256, record counts, sources) into the output dir; the weekly refresh-corpus.yml publishes it alongside the sqlite assets.

Design constraints (non-negotiable)

1. No synthesis without citation — every tool response carries a structured citation resolved against the corpus; below the confidence threshold the tool returns "insufficient corpus coverage," never a best-effort guess.
2. Information retrieval, not legal advice.
3. Primary sources over commentary — codal text and decisions, not summaries.
4. Version-aware, not just current-aware — amendments/repeals/supersessions tracked.
5. Provenance on everything ingested — URL, retrieval date, content hash.

Corpus integrity

Every corpus asset ships with a .sha256 checksum (wired in CI from day one). corpus-loader.ts verifies each asset before caching and refuses to load on mismatch — a corrupted or tampered corpus fails loudly, never silently.

Repository map

• docs/adr/ — architecture decision records (ADR-000 scope; ADR-004 rename)
• docs/sources.md — authoritative PH legal data sources (research-backed)
• docs/seo.md — how this repo is indexed by search engines and LLMs (GEO)
• docs/marketplace/mcpmarket.md — competitive positioning
• docs/agents/ — per-client setup guides (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cline, Cursor)
• docs/enterprise.md — enterprise deployment & operations
• docs/operations.md — post-production runbook (monitoring, backup, DR)
• docs/release.md — release process (code + corpus versioning, gates)
• docs/usecases.md — use-case catalog with ready-to-paste prompts
• Dockerfile / compose.yaml — containerized stdio server (air-gapped corpus)
• scripts/healthcheck.mjs, scripts/check-freshness.mjs — ops probes
• src/db/schema/ — SQLite schemas: laws, cases, issuances
• src/domains/ — 15 domain modules with metadata + cross-references
• data-pipeline/ — ingestion: catalog → adapters → normalizers → chunkers → build
• data-pipeline/catalog.ts — the instrument catalog (ingestion manifest)
• src/ — server, retrieval, tools, resources
• evals/ — golden sets + working run-eval.ts harness
• llms.txt — AI-discoverable index of this repository

The roadmap lives in the project's second brain: ../second-brain/roadmap.md. Current state: ../second-brain/state.md.

For AI agents and crawlers

See llms.txt for a machine-readable index of this repository, and docs/seo.md for the GEO/SEO strategy. This README is written to be parseable by both humans and LLMs: precise, keyword-rich, and factual — no marketing fluff that dilutes ground truth.

License & disclaimer

Apache-2.0 licensed. ph-compliance-mcp is an information-retrieval tool, not a source of legal advice — verify anything you rely on against the official source. See DISCLAIMER.md and LICENSE.

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Frequently asked questions

Is this a replacement for a lawyer? No. It is a retrieval layer that cites primary sources. It refuses to guess below a confidence threshold.

Which sources are ingested? Primary sources only — Official Gazette, LawPhil, SC E-Library, and agency repositories (BIR, DOLE, CSC, DBM, COA, SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG, DTI, and more). See docs/sources.md.

How is accuracy guaranteed? Every response carries a structured citation resolved against the corpus; content hashes and SHA-256 checksums protect corpus integrity; version-aware provisions track amendments.

Can it answer payroll/compliance questions? Yes — payroll, benefits, accounting, HR, and business-transactional domains are first-class citizens, not afterthoughts.

How does it differ from a static PH-law MCP? Live-corpus refresh cadence, provenance verification, version-aware history, a citations knowledge graph, and a no-guess guarantee.