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AgentCounsel
An open, Markdown-native library of legal skills for AI agents — and the legal professionals who supervise them.
AgentCounsel is a collection of standalone legal skills. Each skill is a structured workflow that helps an AI agent — or a lawyer — produce draft legal work product for attorney review. The skills supply discipline and structure: how to scope a task, what inputs to gather, how to organize the output, and what a supervising attorney must verify before anything is relied upon.
AgentCounsel does not provide legal advice. It produces draft work product intended for review and adoption by a qualified, licensed legal professional. Using it does not create an attorney–client relationship.
New here? Start with [QUICKSTART.md](QUICKSTART.md) — it walks through your first skill run in about five minutes.
Who AgentCounsel is for
- Practicing lawyers and in-house legal teams who want AI assistance that is consistent, reviewable, and built around attorney oversight instead of around a vendor's product.
- Legal operations and knowledge-management teams standardizing how their organization uses AI for routine legal work — intake, triage, first-pass review, and drafting.
- Law students and new lawyers who want to see how experienced practitioners structure a contract review, a chronology, a research memo, or a risk assessment.
- AI builders and engineers assembling legal agents or assistants who need well-scoped, safety-first workflow definitions they can drop into any model or framework.
Whoever you are, the assumption is the same: a licensed attorney reviews the output before it is used.
What it is — and is not
It is:
- A library of legal workflows and output structures.
- A way to make AI-assisted legal drafting more consistent, reviewable, and safe.
- Useful piecemeal (one Markdown file) or as a whole.
- Plain Markdown — no build system, no runtime, no account, no lock-in.
It is not:
- Legal advice, or a substitute for a licensed attorney.
- A source of jurisdiction-specific legal rules. Skills give you process and structure, not the law of any jurisdiction.
- A finished-document generator. Every output is a draft that an attorney must review.
- Built around any single AI product. It is a portable library with thin adapters for many environments.
Quick start
- Read the files in
core/— the operating rules every skill inherits. - Open
WORKFLOW_ROUTER.mdand find the workflow that matches your task. - Open that skill's
SKILL.mdand gather its Required Inputs. - Follow the Workflow, and produce the Output Format.
- Complete the Attorney Verification Checklist before relying on anything.
A worked, step-by-step version of this — with copy-paste prompts for each platform — is in [QUICKSTART.md](QUICKSTART.md). Sample outputs are in [`examples/`](examples/).
Practice areas
AgentCounsel has 190 skills: 157 across 20 practice areas, plus 33 cross-cutting skills in three supporting groups (Setup, Legal Operations, Legal Methodology).
| Practice area | Skills | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Legal Research | 5 | Research planning (roadmap before authority gathering), structured IRAC memos, case briefs, multi-authority rule synthesis, and CFR amendment-history tracing. |
| Litigation | 9 | Matter intake, chronologies, demand letters, subpoena triage, depositions, legal holds, privilege logs, claim charts, brief drafting. |
| Contracts | 5 | NDAs, commercial contracts, redlines, statements of work, vendor agreement status. |
| Corporate | 6 | Board minutes, written consents, closing checklists, diligence review, material-contract schedules, entity compliance. |
| Employment | 8 | Terminations, worker classification, hiring, internal investigations, protected leave, severance, workplace policies. |
| Privacy | 4 | Data processing agreements, impact assessments, data subject requests, policy gaps. |
| Product Legal | 4 | Launch review, marketing claims, terms of service, AI features. |
| Regulatory | 4 | Enforcement risk, rule-change summaries, compliance gaps, compliance-program tracking. |
| AI Governance | 4 | AI use-case intake, vendor terms, model risk, AI policies. |
| Intellectual Property | 7 | Trademark triage, infringement triage, cease-and-desist response, patent FTO triage, invention intake, DMCA, open-source licensing. |
| Financial Crime / AML | 2 | KYC onboarding review, and sanctions / PEP / adverse-media screening review. |
| Real Estate | 9 | Commercial lease abstraction and review, amendment reconciliation, purchase and sale agreement review, title and survey objection tracking, diligence and closing checklists, estoppel and SNDA review, zoning issue-spotting. |
| Mergers & Acquisitions | 10 | LOI and term-sheet review, acquisition diligence and data-room review, purchase-agreement and disclosure-schedule review, indemnity and escrow analysis, third-party consents, and closing, post-closing, and integration tracking. |
| Antitrust / Competition | 10 | Antitrust risk intake, competitor-collaboration and information-sharing review, pricing-algorithm and distribution-restraint review, merger issue-spotting, gun-jumping checklists, and compliance-policy review. |
| Securities / Capital Markets | 12 | Private and public offerings, exemption issue-spotting, offering-document and risk-factor review, SEC filing consistency, Form D and blue-sky tracking, investor-rights and insider-trading review, beneficial-ownership triage, and capital-markets closings. |
| Tax | 10 | Tax issue intake, entity tax-classification facts, transaction tax diligence, sales/use tax nexus triage, employment-tax worker-classification intake, contract tax-provision and covenant/indemnity review, tax document organization, international tax issue-spotting, and crypto/digital-asset tax intake. |
| Bankruptcy / Restructuring | 12 | Bankruptcy and creditor-claim intake, proof-of-claim checklists, automatic-stay and preference issue-spotting, executory-contract assumption/rejection review, distressed-M&A diligence and asset-sale checklists, restructuring term-sheet review, plan and disclosure-statement issue-spotting, DIP financing issue-spotting, and deadline-tracker intake. |
| Insurance | 12 | Insurance policy summaries, coverage issue-spotting, claim chronologies, reservation of rights and tender review, coverage-position outlines, bad-faith risk triage, certificate of insurance and contract insurance-requirements review, subrogation/recovery tracking, and renewal/placement diligence checklists. |
| Trusts & Estates | 12 | Estate-planning intake, estate-document summaries, probate document checklists, trust administration and post-death task tracking, fiduciary-duty issue-spotting, beneficiary-designation review, asset and liability inventories, capacity and undue-influence facts organization, estate-litigation chronologies, trust-funding checklists, and estate-tax issue intake. |
| Family Law | 12 | Family-law matter and divorce intake, custody and parenting facts chronologies and schedule organization, custody-order review, child-support and spousal-support facts intake, asset/debt schedules, settlement-agreement issue-spotting, discovery tracking, hearing preparation, and domestic-violence safety referral. |
Three cross-cutting skill groups support work in every practice area:
- Setup (19 skills) — cold-start interviews that configure AgentCounsel for a practice group, plus a matter-workspace builder.
- Legal Methodology (11 skills) — source validation, citation integrity, assumption audit, hallucination red-team, attorney-review gate, privilege/confidentiality review, legal prose polish, output-format compliance, statutory interpretation, risk assessment, and red-team verification.
- Legal Operations (3 skills) — templated legal responses, meeting briefings, and signature-routing checks.
The four-tier taxonomy that classifies these areas and groups — and the model for expanding it — is recorded in docs/PRACTICE_AREAS.md.
See SKILLS_INDEX.md for the full catalog and WORKFLOW_ROUTER.md to route from a task to a skill.
Choose your workflow
Most tasks are one skill. When the work is larger, AgentCounsel gives you several surfaces:
| Surface | Use it when |
|---|---|
| One-off skill | A single, self-contained task and one draft output. |
| Quality check | Reviewing an existing draft — source validation, citation integrity, prose polish, red-team. |
| Practice-area pack | Repeated work in one practice area, installed into your AI tool. |
| Matter pack | A recurring matter type that runs an ordered sequence of skills. |
| Matter workspace | A multi-step, document-heavy, deadline- or source-sensitive, ongoing matter. |
| Playbook | A recurring task type you run the same way every time (e.g., NDA review). |
| Review panel | A high-risk draft that needs several supervised review passes before reliance. |
Full decision guide with worked examples: [docs/CHOOSE_YOUR_WORKFLOW.md](docs/CHOOSE_YOUR_WORKFLOW.md). Every surface ends in attorney review.
How it is organized
core/ Operating rules every skill inherits (read these first).
skills/ The canonical skill library, grouped by practice area.
examples/ Illustrative sample outputs, with fictional facts.
practice-profiles/ Per-practice-area configuration profiles for a legal team.
matter-workspaces/ Scaffolds for organizing one matter — single-file templates
plus the canonical multi-file _template/.
matter-packs/ Workflow bundles — recommended skill sequences per matter type.
playbooks/ Repeatable recipes for recurring task types (NDA review, etc.).
review-panels/ Supervised multi-pass review workflows for a draft.
overlays/ Industry and sector overlays that tune skills for a context.
adapters/ Thin integration files for specific environments.
connectors/ External-source verification integrations (e.g., CourtListener).
metadata/ Generated machine-readable skill index (index.json).
docs/ The metadata standard, the safety model, the FAQ, and the practice-area registry.
scripts/ Standard-library Python helpers (validation, index, packs).
dist/ Generated platform install packs (gitignored; built by
scripts/build_platform_packs.py).
SKILLS_INDEX.md Full catalog of every skill.
WORKFLOW_ROUTER.md "I need to do X" -> which skill to use.
COMMANDS.md Slash-style command shorthands mapped to skills.The skills/ directory is the canonical source of truth. Everything else points back to it.
Anatomy of a skill
Each skill lives in its own folder with a SKILL.md file and optional templates/:
skills/contracts/nda-review/
SKILL.md The workflow.
templates/nda-risk-table.md A copyable, attorney-review-ready template.Every SKILL.md follows the same structure — Purpose, Use When, Required Inputs, Do Not Use When, Legal Safety Rules, Workflow, Output Format, and an Attorney Verification Checklist — and carries standardized, agent-readable YAML frontmatter so tools and agents can discover and route skills. See docs/SKILL_METADATA_STANDARD.md.
Ways to use AgentCounsel
Recommended: install a pre-built practice-area pack
A platform pack is one file that bundles the global safety rules, the practice profile, the slash commands, and every skill in a practice area. Upload it to your AI tool's project or workspace and you can start work immediately — no copying files one at a time.
Pre-built packs are hosted on the deployed Pages site and rebuilt on every push to main:
- [Browse the packs page](https://zgbrenner.github.io/agentcounsel/packs/) — direct downloads per practice area for ChatGPT (.md), Claude (.zip), and Gemini (.zip), plus AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md for repo agents.
- The packs page lists every practice area with its skill count and a "How to use" block per platform.
For finer-grained control, you can also...
AgentCounsel is plain Markdown, so it works anywhere an agent or person can read a file. The library-as-files paths below give you more control than a consolidated pack.
| Surface | How to use AgentCounsel | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
| Generic Markdown | Open any SKILL.md, paste it into your assistant as context, and follow the workflow. Works with any model. | adapters/generic-md/ |
| ChatGPT | Create a ChatGPT Project and add individual skill files. (For the consolidated practice-area pack, use the packs page above.) | adapters/generic-md/ |
| Claude | Use the Claude Code plugin-style bundle, or keep the repo in a folder Claude can read as a local playbook. | adapters/claude-code-plugin/, adapters/claude-cowork/ |
| Gemini | Install the repository as a Gemini CLI extension — gemini-extension.json and GEMINI.md load the operating model automatically. | adapters/gemini/ |
| Codex / repo agents | Point a repo-based coding or legal agent at the library through AGENTS.md so it selects the narrowest relevant skill. | adapters/codex/, AGENTS.md |
| Cursor | Add the library to a project and reference it from a .cursorrules file or AGENTS.md. (The packs page above also serves a ready-made .cursorrules.) | adapters/codex/ |
| Your own agent | Vendor the skills/ and core/ directories into your project and reference them from your agent's instructions. | skills/, core/ |
Adapters are intentionally thin: they tell an environment how to find and use the canonical library; they do not duplicate it. The one exception is the Claude Code plugin bundle, which carries generated copies of a curated set of skills — regenerate it with python scripts/sync_plugin_skills.py (see PLUGIN_SYNC.md).
Installing or copying skills
- A practice area (recommended): download a pre-built pack from the packs page — one file per practice area for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Or run
python scripts/build_platform_packs.pylocally to produce the same packs indist/. - One skill: copy a single
SKILL.md(and itstemplates/, if any) into your assistant. Nothing else is required. - The whole library: clone the repository, or vendor
skills/andcore/into your own project.
There is no installer, no package to publish, and no runtime dependency. A skill is just a file.
Safety model
Every skill inherits the operating rules in core/:
- Draft legal work product only. Attorney review is always required before output is relied upon.
- Never invent legal authority, citations, quotations, facts, or deadlines.
- Separate facts, assumptions, law, analysis, strategy, and verification items.
- Identify jurisdiction, governing law, posture, and the relevant date — or flag them as unknown.
- Preserve confidentiality and privilege.
- Flag uncertainty with visible placeholders instead of guessing.
The full safety model — the threat model, what AgentCounsel deliberately does not do, and how to use it safely with confidential material — is in [docs/SAFETY_MODEL.md](docs/SAFETY_MODEL.md). Security reporting and guidance are in SECURITY.md.
Configuring AgentCounsel for a team
AgentCounsel runs out-of-the-box without configuration. To improve output quality for a practice group adopting the library across multiple matters, you can populate a practice-group profile at practice-profiles/<area>.md. The profile gives ~20 skills access to the group's standing positions, escalation thresholds, and output preferences.
Eval coverage is tracked through lightweight, no-API checks in evals/ and reports/eval-coverage.md. These evals test structure, routing, metadata, packs, quality checks, and candidate-output safety signals; they do not verify legal correctness or replace attorney review.
See CONFIGURING.md for the full configuration guide. The short version:
- Run the cold-start interview for the practice area (
skills/setup/<area>-cold-start-interview/SKILL.md) with a supervising attorney, or edit the profile template directly. - Load the populated profile into your AI workspace alongside any skill that consumes it (see
practice-profiles/README.mdfor the list). - Skills that consume the profile will benchmark against its Standard Positions and Escalation Thresholds; skills that do not consume it are unaffected.
Configuration is opt-in. Skipping it costs you benchmarking-against-standing-positions but does not degrade any other skill's output.
Two optional layers let a legal team adapt the library without changing any skill:
- [`practice-profiles/`](practice-profiles/) — one profile per practice area capturing the team's jurisdictions, escalation thresholds, standard positions, review requirements, and prohibited assumptions. The Setup cold-start interview skills fill a profile in.
- [`matter-workspaces/`](matter-workspaces/) — scaffolds for organizing one specific matter: parties, documents, deadlines (always flagged for attorney verification), open items, sources, and an index of the draft work product produced by skills. Single-file templates plus a canonical multi-file template at
matter-workspaces/_template/, whichpython scripts/init_matter_workspace.pyinstantiates. Seedocs/MATTER_WORKSPACES.md.
Both are plain Markdown and add no backend, runtime, or vendor dependency.
Examples
The examples/ directory contains illustrative sample outputs — including primary skill outputs and quality-layer passes such as source validation, prose polish, hallucination red-team, and attorney-review gating. Every fact in them is fictional. They show the shape and quality of a skill's deliverable; they are not legal advice and not templates for a real matter.
Validation and continuous integration
The repository ships a lightweight validation script — Python standard library only, no dependencies — that checks every skill's structure, frontmatter, links, and safety framing:
python scripts/validate_repo.pyGitHub Actions runs the same checks on every pull request and on pushes to main (see .github/workflows/validate.yml):
python scripts/sync_plugin_skills.py --check # plugin bundle is in sync
python scripts/validate_repo.py # full repository validationOther standard-library helpers in scripts/ build the machine-readable skill index (build_skill_index.py), the per-platform install packs (build_platform_packs.py), the matter-workspace initializer (init_matter_workspace.py), and the browsable static catalog under site/. Every script is documented in docs/CLI.md; the recommended commands to run after each kind of edit are in docs/AGENT_COMMANDS.md. See VALIDATION.md for the full list of checks.
Platform pack manifests and plugin-compatibility guidance are documented in docs/PLUGIN_COMPATIBILITY.md. The generated metadata files metadata/index.json, metadata/router.json, and metadata/packs.json are the machine-readable surfaces for skills, routing, and platform packs.
Contributing
New skills and improvements are welcome. AgentCounsel is Markdown-first and safety-first — see CONTRIBUTING.md for the rules (including how to add skills, quality checks, evals, playbooks, review panels, and packs), docs/SKILL_METADATA_STANDARD.md for the frontmatter standard, and SECURITY.md for security guidance. Questions are answered in docs/FAQ.md.
For the bigger picture, see docs/PROJECT_STATUS.md (an honest maturity snapshot — what is stable, what needs manual review, what is experimental) and docs/WORKFLOW_MAP.md (how core rules, skills, quality checks, packs, workspaces, playbooks, review panels, and evals fit together).
License
MIT License — see LICENSE. Attribution for content adapted from other open-source projects (which remain under their original Apache-2.0 terms) is recorded in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. AgentCounsel is an independent open-source project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google.
Disclaimer
AgentCounsel is a workflow library — not a law firm and not a lawyer. Using it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and it does not provide legal advice. All output is draft work product that must be reviewed and adopted by a qualified, licensed legal professional before it is relied upon. You are responsible for the use of these materials and for compliance with the rules of professional conduct that apply to you.