Counsel workspace 0.2.0

Counsel workspace 0.2.0

The second release of the free, self-hosted legal workspace. 0.2.0 adds opt-in
local OCR for scanned PDFs, a hardened owner-only matter archive restore, and a
production HTTPS deployment guide backed by a strict-TLS deployment verifier.

This remains a functional foundation, not a production-certified or
independently audited product. Please read the limits below before using client
material.

What's new

• Local OCR for scanned PDFs (opt-in). Install Tesseract and Poppler, build
  with INSTALL_OCR=1, enable with COUNSEL_OCR_ENABLED=1. Only pages without
  native text are OCRed, processing is bounded, native-text pages keep their
  extracted text, and mixed documents keep page order and exact character
  offsets. Documents never leave the host. See
  docs/OCR.md.
• Owner-only matter archive restore
  (POST /api/matters/archive/restore). The offline verification pipeline runs
  before any write; identifier collisions fail closed with 409 unless
  newIds=1 requests a remap of every archived record ID; restored execution
  state never resumes (queued jobs restore as failed, schedules and research
  watches restore disabled, non-terminal runs restore as cancelled, audit
  rows are never restored); and restores roll back database, audit and
  in-memory state together on failure. Owner authorization runs before an
  archive upload is buffered.
• Production HTTPS deployment guide
  (docs/DEPLOYMENT.md):
  the end-to-end Caddy recipe, an environment-variable table, an nginx
  alternative, a scheduled backup recipe with an integrity check, and an
  acceptance checklist. node scripts/verify-deployment.js checks the real
  certificate over strict TLS, the HTTP redirect, readiness, security headers
  and anonymous API rejection — and is never bypassed with insecure flags.
• The reverse-proxy request-body cap now allows the 256 MiB archive restore
  uploads end to end.

Run it

Personal mode requires Node.js 24.15 or newer:

git clone https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace.git
cd counsel-workspace
npm ci
npm run start:personal

Open http://127.0.0.1:3000. For HTTPS deployment on a server, see
docs/DEPLOYMENT.md.

The container image is published at
ghcr.io/mehbul/counsel-workspace:0.2.0.

Verification

• 200 tests pass in GitHub Actions, including real Tesseract/Poppler OCR
  checks; 198 pass locally where the engines are not installed.
• Build, formatting, dependency audit, Caddyfile validation, Docker build and
  the hardened-container smoke test pass in
  CI.
• The release image was built and published by
  run 40663103009.
• CodeQL and Gitleaks pass on the public repository.
• The maintainer exercised the HTTPS deployment flow locally against
  https://localhost with the real Caddy binary — strict-TLS verification,
  secure cookies, proxy-keyed rate limits and authenticated WebSocket upgrades
  — plus a backup-then-restore drill with an isolated restore boot. Public
  hostname acceptance by an operator is still pending; product.json keeps
  productionDeploymentDrill: false until it is done.
• The clause engine numbers are unchanged: 33.98% answerable-only token F1 and
  77.05% answerability balanced accuracy on a document-disjoint CUAD validation
  split. Regression measurements, not legal-accuracy evidence.

Known limits

• OCR is not preinstalled: scanned PDFs need separately installed local
  Tesseract and Poppler tools, explicitly enabled by the operator.
• No SSO, SCIM, MFA or enterprise directory integration.
• No iManage or NetDocuments adapter, provider ACL sync or ethical-wall
  mapping.
• Archives are checksummed but not encrypted, signed or notarized; restore is
  owner-only.
• No multi-instance or high-availability mode.
• No independent security audit, penetration test or legal review.
• No guarantee of legal accuracy.
• No blinded legal-quality comparison with Legora or any commercial product.
• No live Slack or Teams tenant acceptance.
• Production HTTPS deployment on a public hostname has not been exercised by an
  operator yet.

Read the security policy,
threat model,
verification record
and changelog.

Links

• Website: https://mehbul.github.io/counsel-workspace/
• Documentation: https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace#readme
• Issues: https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/issues
• Security reports: https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/security/advisories/new

Counsel workspace is independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by or
sponsored by Legora or any commercial legal-AI provider. "Legora" is a trademark
of its respective owner. Nothing here is legal advice.

If this is useful, star the repository so other small practices can find it.

Counsel workspace 0.1.0 - first public preview

Counsel workspace 0.1.0

The first public preview of a free, self-hosted legal workspace: contract
review, legal research, drafting, workflows and client collaboration on your own
computer or server. Apache 2.0, no seat fee, no telemetry and no mandatory model
API.

This is a functional foundation, not a production-certified or independently
audited product. Please read the limits below before using client material.

Highlights

• Personal mode for one trusted computer, with loopback-only access and
  synthetic seed data.
• Team mode with owner-created accounts, Argon2 password hashing, revocable
  sessions, CSRF and origin checks, rate limits, and owner/editor/viewer/guest
  roles.
• Matters and documents with PDF, DOCX, TXT, Markdown and CSV import,
  original-file retention, page and paragraph anchors, and OCR-needed reporting.
• Evidence-first review with matter-scoped ranked search, deterministic
  clause anchors, exact offsets, conservative abstention, review tables and CSV
  export.
• Drafting and comparisons with rich text, comments, checkpoints, proposed
  edits, highlighted changes and DOCX export.
• Approval-gated workflows, durable runs, retries, cancellation and
  schedules.
• Guest-only client portal with explicit publication and immediate
  revocation.
• US Federal Register and eCFR research with official-origin pinning and
  publication watches.
• Signed webhook, Slack and Teams notifications with encrypted secrets,
  durable retries and receipts.
• Portable matter archives with a manifest, SHA-256 checksums, readable
  source text, structured records and an offline verifier.
• MCP integration for scoped evidence reading and host-authored drafts,
  reviews and tasks.
• Optional local Ollama or bring-your-own model generation, disabled by
  default.

Run it

Personal mode requires Node.js 24.15 or newer:

git clone https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace.git
cd counsel-workspace
npm ci
npm run start:personal

Open http://127.0.0.1:3000. For Docker deployment, see
docs/OPERATIONS.md.

The container image is published at
ghcr.io/mehbul/counsel-workspace:0.1.0.

Verification

• 188 tests pass locally and in GitHub Actions.
• Build, formatting, dependency audit, Docker build and hardened-container smoke
  test pass in CI.
• CodeQL and Gitleaks pass on the public repository.
• The clause engine scored 33.98% answerable-only token F1 and 77.05%
  answerability balanced accuracy on a document-disjoint CUAD validation split.
  The retrieval benchmark is synthetic. These are regression measurements, not
  legal-accuracy evidence.

Known limits

• No OCR for scanned PDFs.
• No SSO, SCIM, MFA or enterprise directory integration.
• No iManage or NetDocuments adapter, provider ACL sync or ethical-wall mapping.
• No archive import, restore, encryption, signature or notarization.
• No multi-instance or high-availability mode.
• No independent security audit, penetration test or legal review.
• No guarantee of legal accuracy.
• No blinded legal-quality comparison with Legora or any commercial product.
• No live Slack or Teams tenant acceptance.

Read the security policy,
threat model,
verification record
and changelog.

Links

• Website: https://mehbul.github.io/counsel-workspace/
• Documentation: https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace#readme
• Issues: https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/issues
• Security reports: https://github.com/mehbul/counsel-workspace/security/advisories/new

Counsel workspace is independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by or
sponsored by Legora or any commercial legal-AI provider. "Legora" is a trademark
of its respective owner. Nothing here is legal advice.

If this is useful, star the repository so other small practices can find it.