aka-recht

AKA Recht is a local case-file management tool for managing German legal matters yourself. It is aimed at personal legal matters such as dismissals, penalty notices, criminal complaints, objections, or tenancy disputes, and helps users bring scattered letters, photos, emails, and deadlines together into a folder with a fixed structure.

Purpose and positioning The core of the tool is the "local case file": all case files are stored on the user's own computer, with no cloud storage, and no account, API key, or network required. Each case has a unique identifier and a fixed directory structure, metadata is stored in akte.json, and a log is included. The tool explicitly states: it does not provide legal advice and does not replace a lawyer; which deadline specifically applies and when it begins still must be confirmed by the user.

Main capabilities

1. Case-file structure: each case contains documents, parties, deadlines, and a record of proceedings; original files are not modified; digital fingerprints (checksums) make file changes identifiable.
2. Deadline calculation: calculates deadline end dates based on Sections 187, 188, and 193 of the German Civil Code, displays the triggering event, legal basis, and calculation path, and takes weekends and public holidays in the relevant federal state into account (under Section 193, based on the state of the place of declaration or performance).
3. Timeline: with time as the central axis, other institutions' actions are on the left and the user's own steps are on the right; key events can be located with one click, are color-coded by group, and are labeled with "responded to" and intervals (such as "7 days later"); each source can open the corresponding document.
4. AI collaboration: through the MCP (Model Context Protocol) interface, Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, or other AI that supports MCP or can execute commands can search case files, analyze documents, and draft texts. The tool provides 7 guides covering the process from case entry to draft review, as well as 36 tools for AI to read and (after user confirmation) write to the case file. Content that the AI reads from the case file is sent to the respective AI provider; changes to the case file are made only after explicit user confirmation.
5. Interface: pure HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, no framework, no external access required. The interface is divided into "Center" (overview, all cases, inbox, all case deadlines, legal sources, backup and inventory, settings, guides) and each case's "Case File" (overview, documents with preview, parties, proceedings, timeline, deadlines with calculator, tasks, drafts, evidence and attachments, log).
6. Drafts and backups: drafts have version numbers; if the text is unchanged, the version number is retained, and if the text changes, it receives a new version number; backup restore testThe trial will separately report whether archiving is complete and whether each case complies with the data model rules; the backup target is validated as a valid folder path outside the project before saving.

Usage Running requires Python 3.12 or higher, with no other required packages. On macOS, double-click Start.command to launch; on first run, macOS will ask whether to open it. After launch, the browser displays the case files, and the service continues running in a separate session. To stop the service, run python3 "06 Werkzeuge/dienst/server.py" --stop. Each launch generates a launch link that is valid for only two minutes and can be used only once. On Linux, execute permission is required, and opening the browser is handled by xdg-open. Optional features: if text needs to be extracted from PDFs, pdftotext (poppler package) can be installed; if OCR is needed for photos and scans without a text layer, tesseract (including the German language pack) can be installed, and PDF scans also require pdftoppm. Not installing these programs does not affect other functions; it will only indicate that no text was read. Note: do not repackage the folder yourself with zip, ditto, or Finder, because the UTF-8 marker will not be written, and extracting it on other systems may corrupt file names (for example, "06 Entwürfe" becoming garbled text). If you need to share, share the GitHub link; if you need to back up, use the button within the tool.

Use cases Suitable for individuals in Germany handling their own legal matters, centrally managing documents, tracking deadlines, organizing timelines, and using AI to assist with analysis and drafting text. Especially suitable for users who need to store sensitive data locally and do not want to upload it to the cloud.

Limitations

• Does not provide legal advice and is not a substitute for a lawyer.
• Cases cannot yet be archived or removed as a whole; case folders should not be deleted manually.
• CSV can already be read as text, but Excel (.xlsx) and calendar (.ics) still lack text previews.
• The AI interface's compact case overview does not yet provide complete details, notes, and original annotations for events, and lacks a dedicated reading tool.
• The Windows launch script Start.bat still modifies three included AI configuration files, which may prevent updates in a git working copy (unfixed audit point 10).
• As of 2026-10-08, 99/99 automated checkpoints pass on macOS 26.7.1 and Python 3.14.7; 2026-10-02 passed 77 checkpoints on macOS, Linux, and Windows; the 22 checkpoints added since then and extended checks have not yet been completed on Linux and Windows, and full acceptance across all three systems is still pending.
• Technical tests do not prove legal correctness, and unresolved source notices still need to be verified.
• On Glama, these tools can be tried in the browser, but that is a third-party test environment that only shows tool responses, not the interface, and is not suitable for real files.
• A fictional sample case (employer dismissal) is provided, which can be tried by clicking "Load sample case" in the interface.