Austrian case law + federal statutes, inside Claude.

ris-mcp is a local MCP server that mirrors the Austrian Rechtsinformationssystem (RIS) into a searchable SQLite database, so Claude (Desktop, Code, claude.ai) can answer legal-research questions against the full corpus of published Austrian court decisions and consolidated federal law. Free, open, CC0 data.

Install GitHub

🏛️

All published case law

OGH, VfGH, VwGH, BVwG, 9 Landesverwaltungsgerichte, and special-body decisions — every judikatur source RIS publishes.

📚

Consolidated federal law

Every § and Artikel of Austrian Bundesrecht in its current Fassung, searchable alongside the case law that applies it.

⚡

Sub-ms local search

SQLite + FTS5 BM25 ranking. Your queries never leave your machine. Works offline.

Install

Status: the pre-built dataset is being uploaded (full backfill takes 2–3 days). Until it lands on HuggingFace, step 3 below will fail with a friendly message telling you to run ris-ingest --full locally. Watch the stats section for updates.

1. Install uv (the Python package runner).
```
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
```
See docs.astral.sh/uv for Windows instructions.
2. Register the MCP server with Claude.
```
claude mcp add ris -- uvx --from git+https://github.com/jonashertner/ris-mcp ris-mcp serve
```
After ris-mcp is published on PyPI, this simplifies to uvx ris-mcp serve.
3. Download the pre-built corpus (one-time, ~12 GB).
```
uvx --from git+https://github.com/jonashertner/ris-mcp ris-ingest import-from-hf
```
Or run your own ingest with ris-ingest --full (2–3 days).

Claude Desktop config

If you'd rather hand-edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ris": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/jonashertner/ris-mcp", "ris-mcp", "serve"]
    }
  }
}

Why not `philrox/ris-mcp-ts`?

A legitimate TypeScript MCP wrapper for RIS already exists. It's a great fit for casual queries. ris-mcp is a different trade-off: build and maintain a local mirror so you get better answers.

Capability	philrox (live proxy)	ris-mcp (local mirror)
Claude can query Austrian law	✅	✅
Search quality	RIS field-based keyword	FTS5 BM25 over full text
Latency	2–5 s per query	< 10 ms
Works offline	❌	✅
Survives RIS API outages	❌	✅
Citation graph (future)	❌	Phase 2

Corpus

Loading stats…

Roadmap

✅ Phase 1 — ingester, SQLite/FTS5 store, three MCP tools.
🚧 Phase 1.5 — PyPI release, public landing page, pre-built HF dataset.
🔜 Phase 2 — resolved citation graph: find_leading_cases, find_citations, find_appeal_chain.
🔜 Phase 3 — semantic reranking and a remote hosted MCP endpoint (no local install).
🔜 Phase 4 — Materialien: RV-Begründungen and Stenographische Protokolle for teleological interpretation.
🔜 Phase 5 — Landesrecht, commentary integration if viable.