indian-hc-drafting

Draft pleadings across all 25 Indian High Courts — from a single Claude plugin

Visit the live site: wolfgangrush.github.io

indian-hc-drafting

Open-source Claude-compatible plugin for drafting pleadings before any High Court of India.

Six-agent drafting pipeline · thirteen case-type skills · bench-config-aware across all twenty-five Indian High Courts.

Released under MIT. Open infrastructure for the legal community. No commercial engagement offered through this repository — see Disclaimer below.

⚠️ AI can make mistakes. Always verify the output.

This software generates assistive drafts and suggestions only. Every legal claim, citation, statute reference, procedural step, deadline calculation, and ground of relief must be independently verified by a qualified human practitioner before filing, advising a client, or relying on the output. The publisher accepts no liability for outputs used without verification.

🛡️ Privacy primitive — Reader agent invokes the gateway: This drafting plugin's Reader agent (the first agent in the 6-agent pipeline) calls pseudonymisation-gateway (MIT · wolfgang_rush) on the user's case folder BEFORE any cloud-LLM call. Real client names · government IDs · case numbers · phone numbers · currency amounts are replaced with placeholders ([PERSON_1] · [AADHAAR_1] · [CASE_NO_1] · etc.) in a session-scoped in-memory token map that never touches disk. Downstream agents (Format · Drafter · Verifier · Refiner) work entirely on the sanitized text. The Overseer agent (the final agent) calls desanitize() to restore real values in the final pleading before it reaches the file system. Cloud LLM vendors never see your client's real PII.

🚀 Install — wolfgang_rush marketplace

This plugin is part of the wolfgang_rush plugin family — 14 Indian-court drafting plugins distributed via one Claude Code marketplace.

Via Claude Code (CLI) — recommended for the plugin family:

/plugin marketplace add Wolfgangrush/wolfgang-rush-marketplace
/plugin install indian-hc-drafting@wolfgang-rush

Via Claude Desktop: see the Installation section below for the .zip upload flow.

What this plugin does
Bench coverage — all 25 Indian High Courts
Case-type skills (full inventory with statutory authority)
The 6-agent drafting pipeline (what each agent does)
Installation — Claude Desktop application
Your first pleading — step-by-step walkthrough
The bench-config.md file — how bench customisation works
Why MIT License (and not Apache 2.0, GPL, or anything else)
Sibling plugins (wolfgang_rush legal-tech family)
Why this exists
Roadmap
Contributing
Contact
Author and brand
Provenance and privilege statement
Disclaimer and Bar Council of India Rule 36 compliance
License

What this plugin does

This plugin lets an Indian advocate, sitting inside the Claude Desktop application, point to a case folder on disk and obtain a complete High-Court pleading in .docx form — Cause Title, Facts, Grounds, Prayer, Verification, Index, Synopsis, List of Annexures, and the accompanying applications (stay / condonation of delay / exemption / urgency) — formatted in the specific High Court bench's idiom sourced from a bench-config.md file the user places in the case folder.

The pipeline is six agents running in sequence:

Reader — extracts facts from the case folder with a per-document audit log, identifies annexure candidates, and halts if any required statute PDF is missing.
Format — loads the case-type-specific skill template (e.g. pil-draft, bail-draft), reads the user's bench-config, substitutes the Court header / parties-separator / annexure-prefix / paper-size, and emits a format-shell.md ready for the Drafter.
Drafter — writes the actual narrative — Facts paragraphs with inline annexure markers, Grounds per the case-type structure, Prayer, Index, Synopsis, List of Annexures, and any accompanying application that the facts require. Outputs draft-v1.docx and draft-v1.md.
Verifier — anti-hallucination firewall. Compares every fact in the draft against the Reader's extracted case-facts.md line-by-line. Flags fabricated dates, mis-cited sections, orphan annexure markers, and unsupported assertions.
Refiner — applies Verifier flags, polishes language, enforces HC Registry formatting per the bench-config, strips AI-style markers (em-dashes / "moreover" / "furthermore" / "navigate" / etc.).
Overseer — reads the polished draft with an opposing-counsel lens. Flags weak prayers, contradictory facts, attackable defects, missing limbs of argument. Outputs opposing-notes.md and the final draft.

A built-in code-substitution privacy firewall replaces real client names with structural placeholders during drafting, so the underlying AI model never processes raw personal data; the final draft re-substitutes the real names locally on the user's machine.

The output is what an advocate would file before an Indian High Court. Not a template. Not a checklist. A pleading — ready for the advocate's review, professional verification, signature, and filing.

Bench coverage — all 25 Indian High Courts

India has twenty-five High Courts under Article 214 and Article 231 of the Constitution. This plugin supports all of them through a bench-config architecture: the structural skeleton of any HC pleading is uniform (Cause Title → Parties → Statutory Opening → Prelude → Facts → Grounds → Prayer → Verification → Counsel block → Index → Synopsis → List of Annexures), and the bench-specific elements (Court header text, Appellate-Side / Original-Side Rules reference, annexure-marker convention, paper-size / font preference, section-headers style, prayer catchall) are supplied by the user via a bench-config.md file in the case folder.

The plugin ships with 28 ready-to-copy bench-config exemplars — one per High Court, plus three additional Bombay HC sub-benches (Principal Bench at Mumbai, [Your Bench], Aurangabad Bench, Goa Bench at Panaji).

#	High Court	Seat	Bench-config exemplar	Validation depth at v0.1.0-alpha
1	Bombay High Court — [Your Bench]	[bench city]	`bench-config/exemplars/bombay-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community Registry-validation welcomed
2	Bombay High Court — Principal Bench (Mumbai)	Mumbai	`bench-config/exemplars/bombay-hc-principal-mumbai.md`	bench-config supported · validation deepening v0.1.x
3	Bombay High Court — Aurangabad Bench	Aurangabad	`bench-config/exemplars/bombay-hc-aurangabad.md`	bench-config supported · validation deepening v0.1.x
4	Bombay High Court — Goa Bench (Panaji)	Panaji	`bench-config/exemplars/bombay-hc-goa.md`	bench-config supported · validation deepening v0.1.x
5	Allahabad High Court	Prayagraj (with circuit bench at Lucknow)	`bench-config/exemplars/allahabad-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
6	Andhra Pradesh High Court	Amaravati	`bench-config/exemplars/andhra-pradesh-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
7	Calcutta High Court	Kolkata (with circuit benches at Port Blair and Jalpaiguri)	`bench-config/exemplars/calcutta-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
8	Chhattisgarh High Court	Bilaspur	`bench-config/exemplars/chhattisgarh-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
9	Delhi High Court	New Delhi	`bench-config/exemplars/delhi-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
10	Gauhati High Court	Guwahati (with benches at Kohima, Aizawl, Itanagar)	`bench-config/exemplars/gauhati-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
11	Gujarat High Court	Ahmedabad	`bench-config/exemplars/gujarat-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
12	Himachal Pradesh High Court	Shimla	`bench-config/exemplars/himachal-pradesh-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
13	Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court	Srinagar and Jammu (with bench at Leh)	`bench-config/exemplars/jammu-kashmir-ladakh-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
14	Jharkhand High Court	Ranchi	`bench-config/exemplars/jharkhand-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
15	Karnataka High Court	Bengaluru (with circuit benches at Dharwad and Kalaburagi)	`bench-config/exemplars/karnataka-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
16	Kerala High Court	Kochi (Ernakulam)	`bench-config/exemplars/kerala-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
17	Madhya Pradesh High Court	Jabalpur (with benches at Indore and Gwalior)	`bench-config/exemplars/madhya-pradesh-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
18	Madras High Court	Chennai (with circuit bench at Madurai)	`bench-config/exemplars/madras-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
19	Manipur High Court	Imphal	`bench-config/exemplars/manipur-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
20	Meghalaya High Court	Shillong	`bench-config/exemplars/meghalaya-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
21	Orissa High Court	Cuttack	`bench-config/exemplars/orissa-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
22	Patna High Court	Patna	`bench-config/exemplars/patna-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
23	Punjab and Haryana High Court	Chandigarh	`bench-config/exemplars/punjab-haryana-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
24	Rajasthan High Court	Jodhpur (with bench at Jaipur)	`bench-config/exemplars/rajasthan-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
25	Sikkim High Court	Gangtok	`bench-config/exemplars/sikkim-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
26	Telangana High Court	Hyderabad	`bench-config/exemplars/telangana-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
27	Tripura High Court	Agartala	`bench-config/exemplars/tripura-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed
28	Uttarakhand High Court	Nainital	`bench-config/exemplars/uttarakhand-hc.md`	bench-config supported · community contribution welcomed

Note: row 6 (AP HC) and row 26 (Telangana HC) reflect the post-bifurcation (2019) reality. The Calcutta HC's territorial jurisdiction extends to the Union Territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands; the Madras HC's extends to Puducherry; the Kerala HC's extends to Lakshadweep — these are handled through bench-config overlay.

How to use a bench-config: copy the appropriate exemplar from bench-config/exemplars/ into your case folder, rename it to bench-config.md, edit any values that have changed (e.g. if the bench has issued a new Practice Direction), and the plugin renders the pleading in that bench's idiom automatically.

Case-type skills (full inventory)

The plugin ships thirteen case-type skills, each grounded in the statutory authority below. Each skill encodes the case-type-specific structure that the Drafter agent uses; the Format agent layers the bench-config on top.

1. `pil-draft` — Public Interest Litigation (Article 226)

Statutory authority: Article 226 of the Constitution + the PIL Rules of the specific High Court (e.g. Bombay HC Public Interest Litigation Rules 2010). Use case: writ for enforcement of fundamental rights or statutory rights affecting the public at large, or a class of persons unable to approach the Court themselves. Facts the skill asks for: locus standi affidavit basis, the public-rights violation, the respondent authority's failure to act, the prior representations made (if any), the prayer (mandamus / certiorari / prohibition / quo warranto / specific direction). Output: complete PIL ready to file, with the bench's mandatory PIL-checklist annexure and the PIL Rules disclosures pre-filled.

2. `civil-wp-draft` — Civil Writ Petition (Articles 226 / 227)

Statutory authority: Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution. Use case: writ in civil matters — service-law disputes, regulatory orders, education law, property challenges to authority action, certiorari against quasi-judicial tribunals, mandamus to compel statutory duty. Facts the skill asks for: the impugned action / order, the statutory framework, the alternative-remedy position (and why this remedy is more efficacious), the violation of statutory or constitutional right. Output: complete civil writ with grounds laid out under specific Article-226 limbs (violation of Article 14 / 19 / 21, jurisdictional excess, natural justice failure, patent illegality, no alternative remedy).

3. `criminal-wp-draft` — Criminal Writ Petition

Statutory authority: Article 226 + Article 21 of the Constitution + the inherent jurisdiction recognised by the SC in State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal (1992) Supp. 1 SCC 335. Use case: writ for quashing of FIR / quashing of chargesheet / habeas corpus / preventive-detention challenge / regulatory-criminal-process challenge. Facts the skill asks for: the FIR / proceeding details, the Bhajan Lal category invoked, the constitutional violation. Output: complete criminal writ with the Bhajan Lal ground-structure pre-mapped.

4. `criminal-appeal-draft` — Criminal Appeal

Statutory authority: Section 374 / Section 386 CrPC 1973 (or Section 415 / Section 427 BNSS 2023, as applicable to the date of the impugned order). Use case: appeal against a conviction or sentence passed by a Sessions Court or Special Court. Facts the skill asks for: the trial-court judgment under challenge, the prosecution case (in summary), the defence case (in summary), the points for determination, the grounds of appeal. Output: complete criminal appeal with the Memo of Appeal + grounds + accompanying applications (suspension of sentence / bail pending appeal, where the case requires).

5. `application-482-draft` — Application u/s 482 CrPC / Section 528 BNSS

Statutory authority: Section 482 CrPC 1973 / Section 528 BNSS 2023 — the inherent powers of the High Court. Use case: quashing of FIR / proceedings under the Bhajan Lal categories; preventing abuse of process; securing the ends of justice. Facts the skill asks for: the FIR / proceeding, the Bhajan Lal category invoked, the supporting documents (settlement deed, repayment receipt, complainant's affidavit, etc. as relevant). Output: complete Section 482 / 528 application ready to file.

6. `anticipatory-bail-draft` — Anticipatory Bail (Section 438 CrPC / Section 482 BNSS)

Statutory authority: Section 438 CrPC 1973 / Section 482 BNSS 2023. Use case: pre-arrest bail in anticipation of arrest on a non-bailable charge. Facts the skill asks for: the FIR particulars, the offence and sentencing range, the applicant's antecedents, the apprehension of arrest, the parameters under Siddharam Satlingappa Mhetre v. State of Maharashtra (2011) 1 SCC 694. Output: complete anticipatory-bail application with the Mhetre parameters mapped to the facts.

7. `bail-draft` — Regular Bail (Section 439 CrPC / Section 483 BNSS)

Statutory authority: Section 439 CrPC 1973 / Section 483 BNSS 2023. Use case: regular bail by an arrested accused. Facts the skill asks for: the FIR particulars, the offence, the period in custody, the parameters under Sanjay Chandra v. CBI (2012) 1 SCC 40, the medical / age / family / overcharging grounds, any prior bail rejection orders. Output: complete regular-bail application ready to file.

8. `contempt-petition-draft` — Civil and Criminal Contempt

Statutory authority: Contempt of Courts Act 1971 + Article 215 of the Constitution + the Rules of the specific High Court for Contempt Proceedings (e.g. Bombay High Court (Contempt of Court Proceedings) Rules 1994). Use case: civil contempt (wilful disobedience of court order) or criminal contempt (scandalising the court / obstruction of justice). Facts the skill asks for: the order alleged to be disobeyed, the disobedience particulars, the consent of Advocate General (for criminal contempt) where required. Output: complete contempt petition + supporting affidavit + statutory disclosures.

9. `first-appeal-draft` — First Appeal (Civil)

Statutory authority: Section 96 CPC 1908 + Order XLI CPC. Use case: first appeal from a decree of a District Court / Civil Judge (Senior Division) to the High Court in civil matters. Facts the skill asks for: the suit, the trial decision, the points for determination, the grounds of appeal under Section 96 / Order XLI. Output: complete first appeal with Memo of Appeal + grounds + accompanying applications (stay of execution / condonation of delay / etc.).

10. `second-appeal-draft` — Second Appeal (Civil)

Statutory authority: Section 100 CPC 1908 + Order XLII CPC. Use case: second appeal from a first-appellate decree, on a substantial question of law. Facts the skill asks for: the trial decree, the first-appellate decree, the substantial question of law proposed, the case-law on the question. Output: complete second appeal with the substantial-question-of-law proposition front-loaded as Section 100 mandates.

11. `criminal-revision-draft` — Criminal Revision (Section 397 / 401 CrPC / Sections 438 / 442 BNSS)

Statutory authority: Sections 397, 401 CrPC 1973 / Sections 438, 442 BNSS 2023. Use case: revision against interlocutory or final orders not amenable to appeal — discharge, framing of charge, summoning order, sentence revision, etc. Facts the skill asks for: the impugned order, the revisional limb invoked (jurisdiction / illegality / propriety), the supporting case-law. Output: complete criminal revision with grounds mapped to Section 397 limbs.

12. `mact-draft` — Motor Accident Claims Tribunal claim petition

Statutory authority: Sections 165, 166 of the Motor Vehicles Act 1988 + the Claims Tribunal Rules of the relevant State. Use case: claim for compensation arising out of a motor-vehicle accident. Facts the skill asks for: the accident particulars (date, time, place, vehicle numbers, drivers, FIR), the injury / death particulars, the deceased's / injured's income basis, the dependents (for fatal claims), the insurance position. Output: complete MACT claim petition with the Sarla Verma v. DTC (2009) 6 SCC 121 + National Insurance v. Pranay Sethi (2017) 16 SCC 680 compensation-computation matrix applied.

13. `mat-draft` — Matrimonial petitions

Statutory authority: Hindu Marriage Act 1955 (HMA) / Special Marriage Act 1954 (SMA) / Indian Christian Marriage Act 1872 / Family Courts Act 1984 / Section 125 CrPC and Section 144 BNSS / Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005. Use case: divorce, restitution of conjugal rights, judicial separation, nullity, maintenance, custody, domestic-violence reliefs — at the High Court level (e.g. transfer of matrimonial proceedings, appeal from Family Court orders). Facts the skill asks for: the marriage particulars, the ground invoked, the relief sought, the dependent particulars. Output: complete matrimonial petition or appeal in the High Court's matrimonial idiom.

Shared infrastructure skills

_drafting_common — anti-pollution rules, encoding standards, language conventions, AI-style-marker blacklist, citation discipline, common phrases.
_hc_pleading_base — universal High Court pleading skeleton (Cause Title template, parties block, statutory opening, prelude, prayer template, verification clause, counsel block, index template, synopsis template, list of annexures template) — reads bench-specific values from the user's bench-config.md.

The 6-agent drafting pipeline

The plugin is built on the Anthropic Agent SDK convention — six markdown agent files (agents/<name>/<name>.md) with YAML frontmatter declaring name, description, and allowed-tools. Each agent is invoked in sequence on a case folder and reads/writes specific files in that folder.

1. `reader` — first agent

What it reads:

Every file in the case folder (*.pdf, *.docx, *.txt, *.md, *.eml, scanned images via OCR where present)
The case-type skill instruction (e.g. skills/pil-draft/case-facts-questions.md)

What it writes:

case-folder/case-facts.md — extracted facts with per-document audit log
case-folder/annexure-candidates.md — which documents map to which proposed annexures (A, B, C, ...)
case-folder/missing-laws.md — list of statutes referenced but not supplied as PDFs (if any required law is missing, the Reader halts and asks the user to supply the PDF before the pipeline proceeds)

Why it exists: without a faithful fact-extraction step, the Drafter would either hallucinate facts or process raw client documents through the AI — both of which the plugin prevents.

Skills loaded: _drafting_common (for pseudonymisation / privacy firewall rules) + the specific case-type skill's case-facts-questions.md.

2. `format` — second agent

What it reads:

case-folder/case-facts.md (from Reader)
case-folder/bench-config.md (user-supplied)
skills/<case-type>-draft/SKILL.md and skills/<case-type>-draft/format-from-user.md
skills/_hc_pleading_base/SKILL.md
The relevant bench exemplar at bench-config/exemplars/<hc>.md (for reference)

What it writes:

case-folder/format-shell.md — the case-type template with all bench-specific values (Court header, parties-separator, annexure-prefix, paper-size, section-headers style, prayer catchall) substituted from the bench-config

Why it exists: the Drafter should not have to handle bench-specific formatting decisions inline. The Format agent pre-substitutes everything that depends on which bench you are filing in, so the Drafter can focus entirely on writing the narrative.

Skills loaded: _hc_pleading_base + the case-type skill (e.g. pil-draft).

3. `drafter` — third agent

What it reads:

case-folder/case-facts.md
case-folder/format-shell.md
case-folder/bench-config.md
skills/<case-type>-draft/SKILL.md (for the case-type-specific Facts/Grounds/Prayer structure)
skills/_hc_pleading_base/SKILL.md
Law PDFs in case-folder/laws/ (for citing exact section text)

What it writes:

case-folder/draft-v1.md — full markdown intermediate
case-folder/draft-v1.docx — final form, generated from markdown via pandoc using the bench's reference template

Why it exists: this is the actual drafting brain. It writes Facts paragraphs in narrative form (not bullet-point summary), Grounds in the case-type-specific structure, Prayer with primary + interim reliefs, Index, Synopsis, List of Annexures, and any accompanying applications the facts require.

Skills loaded: _drafting_common (style + anti-pollution rules) + _hc_pleading_base (skeleton) + the case-type skill.

4. `verifier` — fourth agent

What it reads:

case-folder/draft-v1.md
case-folder/case-facts.md
The law PDFs in case-folder/laws/

What it writes:

case-folder/verification-report.md — fact-by-fact comparison, flagging:
- Fabricated dates (date appears in draft but not in case-facts)
- Mis-cited sections (statute section in draft doesn't match the law PDF)
- Orphan annexure markers (ANNEXURE-D referenced in text but D not in the annexure list)
- Unsupported assertions (claim in draft without corresponding fact in case-facts)
- Hallucinated citations (case name + citation not traceable to a user-supplied source)

Why it exists: the Verifier is the anti-hallucination firewall. Without it, the plugin would be no safer than asking a general-purpose AI to draft. With it, the plugin can be trusted to produce drafts that the advocate can verify in minutes rather than hours.

Skills loaded: _drafting_common (verification ruleset).

5. `refiner` — fifth agent

What it reads:

case-folder/draft-v1.md
case-folder/verification-report.md
case-folder/bench-config.md

What it writes:

case-folder/draft-v2.md
case-folder/draft-v2.docx

Why it exists: applies the Verifier's flags (corrects fabrications, fixes citations, removes orphan markers), polishes the language (removes AI-style markers like moreover, furthermore, navigate, em-dashes, sentence-final thereby; enforces HC formal register — that, whereas, it is most respectfully submitted), and enforces the bench's Registry formatting (paper size, font, line spacing, margins per the bench-config).

Skills loaded: _drafting_common (style enforcement) + _hc_pleading_base (formatting).

6. `overseer` — sixth and final agent

What it reads:

case-folder/draft-v2.md
case-folder/case-facts.md

What it writes:

case-folder/opposing-notes.md — attackable defects, weak prayers, missing limbs, contradictory facts, ground-by-ground critique from an opposing-counsel lens
case-folder/final-draft.docx (a copy of draft-v2.docx with any final hardening applied)

Why it exists: because the strongest test of a pleading is what an opposing counsel would say. The Overseer reads the draft as if it had been served on her, and writes a critique. The advocate uses that critique to harden the draft before signing.

Skills loaded: _drafting_common (opposing-counsel ruleset).

Installation

This is a Claude-compatible plugin in the Anthropic plugin format, designed to run inside the Claude Desktop application (available at https://claude.ai/download). The plugin folder location depends on your OS:

OS	Plugin folder path
macOS	`~/Library/Application Support/Claude/plugins/`
Windows	`%APPDATA%\Claude\plugins\` (typically `C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\Claude\plugins\`)
Linux	`~/.config/Claude/plugins/`

Clone the plugin into that folder:

# macOS / Linux
mkdir -p ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/plugins   # adjust per OS table
cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/plugins
git clone https://github.com/Wolfgangrush/indian-hc-drafting-litigation.git indian-hc-drafting

# Windows (PowerShell)
mkdir -Force $env:APPDATA\Claude\plugins
cd $env:APPDATA\Claude\plugins
git clone https://github.com/Wolfgangrush/indian-hc-drafting-litigation.git indian-hc-drafting

Restart the Claude Desktop application. The plugin will be auto-discovered on the next session start.

Anthropic Plugin Marketplace (when available)

When the plugin lands on the Anthropic Plugin Marketplace, you will be able to install it from inside the application's plugin browser without using git directly. Until then, the manual clone steps above are the canonical install method.

Verifying the install

In a Claude session, type any of the following:

"draft criminal appeal" — should trigger criminal-appeal-draft
"draft second appeal" — should trigger second-appeal-draft
"draft application 482" — should trigger application-482-draft
/criminal-appeal-draft — explicit slash-invocation

Claude should respond by reading the skill's instructions and asking you for the case folder path or for the case-specific facts. If Claude does not pick up the skill, restart the Desktop app and confirm the plugin folder is at the correct path.

Your first pleading — step-by-step walkthrough

Suppose you wish to draft a Criminal Appeal before the Allahabad High Court against a conviction order passed by the Sessions Court.

Step 1 — create a case folder

~/Desktop/cases/
└── crl-appeal-CASE-NUMBER/
    ├── bench-config.md           ← copied from bench-config/exemplars/allahabad-hc.md
    ├── facts/
    │   ├── trial-court-judgment-DD.MM.YYYY.pdf
    │   ├── charge-sheet-DD.MM.YYYY.pdf
    │   ├── prosecution-evidence-summary.pdf
    │   ├── defence-evidence-summary.pdf
    │   └── sentence-order-DD.MM.YYYY.pdf
    ├── laws/
    │   ├── crpc-1973.pdf
    │   ├── bnss-2023.pdf
    │   └── ipc-1860.pdf
    └── notes.md                   ← your free-form notes

Step 2 — copy the bench-config exemplar

In the Claude application's file browser, navigate to the plugin's folder and copy the bench-config exemplar for your bench:

plugin_folder/bench-config/exemplars/allahabad-hc.md  →  case_folder/bench-config.md

Open bench-config.md in any text editor and verify the values (Court header, parties-separator, annexure-prefix, paper-size, etc.). Edit any value that has changed per a recent Practice Direction issued by your bench.

Step 3 — open the case folder in Claude

In the Claude Desktop application, point Claude at the case folder using the application's file-browser feature.

Step 4 — invoke the skill

draft criminal appeal

The plugin will run the Reader agent first — it will read your case folder, extract facts, write case-facts.md and annexure-candidates.md, and halt if any required law PDF is missing.

Review case-facts.md. Add anything the Reader missed. Save.

Step 5 — continue the pipeline

The plugin will then run Format → Drafter → Verifier → Refiner → Overseer in sequence. At the end, you will have:

draft-v1.md and draft-v1.docx — initial draft
verification-report.md — Verifier flags
draft-v2.md and draft-v2.docx — Refiner output
opposing-notes.md — Overseer critique
final-draft.docx — for your review

Step 6 — review, sign, file

Open final-draft.docx in Microsoft Word or LibreOffice. Read every paragraph. Verify the citations. Verify the facts. Verify the Prayer. Sign. File.

The advocate is responsible for the pleading. The plugin is responsible for the first draft.

The `bench-config.md` file

The bench-config.md is how the plugin knows which High Court you are filing in. Every bench-specific value the Drafter needs lives in this file. A typical bench-config has fields like:

court_header: "IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY, BENCH AT [BENCH CITY]."
parties_separator: "...Petitioner    Versus    ...Respondent"
annexure_prefix: "ANNEXURE-A"          # ANNEXURE-A / Annexure P/1 / Exhibit A / etc.
paper_size: "A4"
font_family: "Times New Roman"
font_size: 14
line_spacing: 1.5
left_margin_cm: 4
section_headers_style: "spaced-caps"    # F A C T S, G R O U N D S, P R A Y E R
salutation_opener: "MOST RESPECTFULLY SHEWETH:"
prayer_catchall_last_clause: "Pass any other order/orders as this Hon'ble Court may deem fit and proper in the facts and circumstances of the case and in the interest of justice."
appellate_side_rules: "Bombay High Court Appellate Side Rules 1960"
original_side_rules: "Bombay High Court Original Side Rules"
practice_directions: "Bombay High Court Practice Notes and Circulars"
state_overlay_acts:
  - "Maharashtra Civil Courts Act 1869"
  - "Bombay Court Fees Act 1959"

The Format agent reads this file and substitutes every value into the case-type skill template. If your bench has issued a new Practice Direction or changed an annexure convention, you edit the bench-config — never the plugin source.

Why MIT License

The plugin is released under the MIT License. This was a deliberate choice. The alternatives — and why they were rejected — are below.

MIT vs the alternatives

License	Suitable for this plugin?	Reasoning
MIT ✅ chosen	Yes	Permissive · 3-line attribution requirement · zero copyleft · zero patent-grant complexity · compatible with the Anthropic Plugin Marketplace TOS · compatible with big-firm legal-tech adoption · allows a future paid commercial layer to ship under a separate corporate entity without dual-license complexity.
Apache 2.0	Close second	Adds an explicit patent grant — but Indian procedural drafting content is non-patentable subject-matter under Section 3(k) of the Patents Act 1970 (algorithms, business methods, and computer programs per se are not patentable in India). The patent grant is therefore dead weight, while the NOTICE-file ceremony and verbosity add friction.
GPL-3.0	❌ Disqualifying	Copyleft would propagate to the user's case folder. The user's pleading — generated from the plugin — could be argued to be a "derivative work" under GPL-3, forcing the pleading itself to be GPL-licensed. No advocate can ship privileged client material under any open-source licence. This is a hard structural blocker.
AGPL-3.0	❌ Disqualifying	Same problem as GPL-3, plus the network-use clause triggers if anyone runs the plugin as part of a SaaS legal-tech product. Effectively blocks all commercial integration — and many corporate legal departments have a blanket no-AGPL policy.
LGPL-3.0	❌ Awkward	Designed for shared libraries, not for plugins that produce derivative documents. The "library exception" doesn't map cleanly to "the plugin emits a `.docx` that you sign and file".
BSD-3-Clause / BSD-2-Clause	Functionally equivalent to MIT	Slightly different attribution language; no practical advantage. MIT is more widely understood.
Unlicense / CC0	❌ Forfeits authorship	Drops the copyright assertion entirely. The author loses the moral-rights claim under Section 57 of the Indian Copyright Act 1957, and the project loses the derivative-misuse traceability that the copyright assertion provides.
Creative Commons (any variant)	❌ Wrong instrument	Creative Commons licences are designed for creative content (text, images, video) and are not recommended for software — they lack the software-specific warranty disclaimers, the contributor-licence-agreement compatibility, and the patent-grant clarity that software-grade licences (MIT / Apache / BSD / GPL) provide.

One-paragraph rationale

The plugin is released under MIT because Indian advocates and law firms — from solo practitioners on a District Court roster to the litigation teams at Cyril Amarchand, AZB, Shardul Amarchand, Khaitan, and the in-house counsel at every major Indian corporate — must be able to clone, fork, adapt, and integrate this plugin alongside their privileged client material without the licence propagating into their case folders or attaching to the pleadings they file. Only MIT (and equivalently BSD and Apache 2.0) satisfies that constraint. MIT was preferred over Apache 2.0 because the patent-grant language Apache adds carries no practical benefit in the Indian context (procedural-drafting content is unpatentable under Section 3(k) of the Patents Act 1970), and MIT's three-line clarity is friendlier to advocates who are not professional software developers and who will read the LICENSE file before adopting the plugin in chambers.

Compatibility statement

The MIT licence under which this plugin is released is compatible with:

The Apache License 2.0 (a downstream user may relicense as Apache 2.0 if they wish)
The BSD 2-Clause and BSD 3-Clause licences
The GPL family (a downstream user may incorporate MIT code into a GPL project, though they cannot relicence this repository as GPL because they are not the author)
The Anthropic Plugin Marketplace Terms of Service (which require an OSI-approved permissive licence for community plugins)
All major commercial-software integration policies

Sibling plugins

This plugin is one in the wolfgang_rush family of Indian legal-drafting plugins. All thirteen siblings ship under the same six-agent pipeline (Reader → Format → Drafter → Verifier → Refiner → Overseer) and the family-of-plugins doctrine — each plugin narrowly scoped to one practice area / forum:

Plugin	GitHub repo	Scope
`supreme-court-drafting`	supreme-court-drafting-litigation	SLPs · Writ Art 32 · Transfer · Review · Curative — Supreme Court of India
`indian-hc-drafting` (this)	indian-hc-drafting-litigation	Pleadings across all 25 Indian High Courts (bench-config-aware)
`district-court-drafting`	district-court-drafting-litigation	Plaints · WS · CPC applications · BNSS complaints across 25+ States (state-config)
`indian-family-drafting`	indian-family-drafting-litigation	HMA · SMA · IDA · matrimonial · custody · DV Act · maintenance · adoption
`indian-contracts-drafting`	indian-contracts-drafting-litigation	MSA · NDA · employment · lease · sale · GPA · SHA · will · loan · arbitration
`indian-banking-drafting`	indian-banking-drafting-litigation	DRT · SARFAESI · NI Act 138 · IBC §7 / §95 · DRAT
`indian-labour-drafting`	indian-labour-drafting-litigation	ID Act · POSH · PG · EPF · ESI · MW · IESO + State exemplars
`indian-property-drafting`	indian-property-drafting-litigation	Gift · Exchange · Release · Trust · Wakf · Easement · Partition · Settlement · Mortgage · TIR
`indian-company-drafting`	indian-company-drafting	NCLT (241/242 · 245 · 230-232 · 66 · 252 · 213) · NCLAT (421 + 61) · IBC §9 / §10
`indian-tax-drafting`	indian-tax-drafting	Form 35 CIT(A) · Form 36 ITAT · Form 10A · Sec 148A · 263/264 · 271/270A · 144C · 201 · 260A
`indian-consumer-drafting`	indian-consumer-drafting	District / State / NCDRC + medical-negligence + product liability
`indian-mact-drafting`	indian-mact-drafting	MV Act 1988 (2019 amended) · Sarla Verma + Pranay Sethi · state-config
`indian-ip-drafting`	indian-ip-drafting	Copyright · Trade Marks · Patents · Designs + HC IP Divisions (post-IPAB-abolition) + Anton Piller / John Doe

Each plugin can be installed independently, each plugin's Rule 36 firewall is narrow and reviewable, each plugin's bench / forum discipline is depth-validated within its scope, and the user installs only what they need.

Why this exists

India has roughly 1.4 million enrolled advocates and twenty-five High Courts. There is currently no Claude-compatible drafting plugin that respects Indian High Court Registry formatting, Indian procedural law (CPC, CrPC, BNSS), bench-specific conventions, or the structural distinction between privileged client material and public procedural knowledge.

Foreign legal-AI tools cannot fill this gap. The training data does not exist outside the country; the procedural conventions are jurisdiction-specific; and the formatting requirements at the Registry counter of a Bombay or Madras or Calcutta High Court are matters of bench practice that no foreign tool has encountered.

This plugin opens that door. Benches are supported via bench-config; Registry-acceptance validation per bench is welcomed via PR from advocates familiar with those benches.

Roadmap

v0.1.0-alpha (current) — universal HC pleading skeleton + 13 case-type skills + 6-agent pipeline + bench-config architecture + 28 bench exemplars
v0.1.x — bug fixes, quality-gate iteration, language-register polish, formatting refinements driven by user feedback
v0.x onward — bench-config calibration deepening per High Court, additional case-type skills, and procedural-rule updates as they arrive
v1.0.0 — Stable release after community-validated formatting and field-testing

Per-bench deep validation will arrive in the order advocates contribute. The plugin's bench-config architecture means any advocate filing regularly before a given bench can deepen the calibration for that bench by opening an issue or pull request with their bench's idiom — no central roadmap is needed to enable that. The roadmap above is therefore intentionally open-ended.

Contributing

Advocates who file regularly before any Indian High Court are invited to contribute bench-config calibration for the specific bench they practise before. Open a GitHub issue with:

Your practice bench (e.g., "Karnataka HC at Bengaluru")
Your bench's Court header text
Your bench's Appellate-Side / Original-Side Rules reference
Your bench's annexure-marker convention
Any other bench-specific formatting overlay (paper size, font, section-header style, prayer catchall, etc.)
Recent Practice Directions issued by the bench affecting pleading format

Pull requests are welcome with a one-paragraph explanation of the change and a reference to the bench rule or Practice Direction that justifies it.

This plugin is open source under MIT.

Contact

All inquiries and feedback are handled via GitHub Issues on the project repository.

Bug reports · feature requests · bench-config contributions · improvements: open an issue.

This project does not have an email contact channel and does not accept private legal-services inquiries through this repository. No commercial engagement is offered through this plugin or its repository.

(Future releases may introduce a commercial layer published under a separate corporate entity — at that point this section will be updated. v0.x.x is open-source-only infrastructure with no commercial channel.)

Author and brand

This plugin is authored by Rushikesh R. Mahajan, Advocate, enrolled with the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa, practising before the High Courts of India.

The plugin is published under the wolfgang_rush open-source brand — the author's publishing handle for legal-technology infrastructure. All commits to this repository are signed under the wolfgang_rush GitHub identity. The real-identity declaration appears here, and again in NOTICE.md, so that the Bar Council Rule 36 accountability mechanism (advocate-as-individual responsibility) is preserved transparently rather than displaced by the publishing handle.

Provenance and privilege statement

See NOTICE.md for the full provenance and privilege statement.

In brief: this plugin contains only public procedural knowledge — High Court Registry conventions, CPC / CrPC / BNSS references, bench-specific formatting derived from public rules of court, and generic placeholders. It does not contain any specific client matter, communication, document, or personal data. The legal distinction between privileged client communications (protected under Section 132 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023 / Section 126 of the Indian Evidence Act 1872) and general professional knowledge of procedural law (public, sharable, the same knowledge underlying every legal-drafting textbook from Mulla to Sarkar to Ratanlal & Dhirajlal) is set out in NOTICE.md in full.

Compliance posture — Supreme Court e-Committee AI framework

This plugin is assistive drafting infrastructure, not autonomous decision-making software. Its operational posture is aligned with the Supreme Court of India e-Committee's stated position on AI in legal work.

"AI and digital tools must be used as supportive instruments and should not be allowed to override judicial reasoning."

— Justice Rajesh Bindal, Judge, Supreme Court of India Judicial Process Re-engineering and Digital Transformation conference, 11–12 April 2026 Organised by the Supreme Court e-Committee in collaboration with the Department of Justice, Government of India. (Coverage — Law Trend)

The same posture underpins the Supreme Court's own AI infrastructure for the judiciary:

SUPACE — Supreme Court Portal for Assistance in Court Efficiency. AI-enabled assistive tool launched on 6 April 2021 by then-CJI S.A. Bobde. Provides legal research, fact extraction, document review, and drafting assistance to judges and legal researchers. By design, SUPACE is not a decision-making system — it processes facts and surfaces them to the human user. The Supreme Court has recommended adoption across all Indian High Courts.
SUVAS — Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software. AI-powered translation tool launched in November 2019 by then-CJI S.A. Bobde. Translates judicial documents, orders, and judgments between English and ten Indian regional languages.

What this plugin does — and does not — do under that framework

Does:

Generate structural skeletons of pleadings, drawing on public statutes, schedule forms, and court rules.
Run a six-agent assistive pipeline (Reader → Formatter → Drafter → Verifier → Refiner → Overseer) over the user's case facts.
Surface citations, procedural anchors, and bench-specific conventions for advocate review.

Does NOT:

Generate final filings autonomously.
Substitute for advocate professional judgment.
Replace human verification.
Operate without an enrolled advocate retaining full professional responsibility.

Every draft produced through this plugin must be advocate-owned and human-verified before filing. The enrolled advocate using this plugin retains full professional responsibility under the Advocates Act 1961 and the Bar Council of India Rules, including verification of facts, accuracy of citations, correctness of legal grounds, propriety of the prayer, and signature on every pleading filed.

This is the same standard the Supreme Court itself applies to its own AI infrastructure (SUPACE / SUVAS): AI as supportive instrument, never as decision-maker.

Disclaimer and Bar Council of India Rule 36 compliance

This plugin is open-source infrastructure released free of cost under the MIT licence. It is published as a contribution to the legal community and to the broader open-source developer ecosystem.

This plugin:

Does not constitute legal advice.
Does not create an advocate-client relationship between the author and any user.
Does not solicit professional work from any user, group, or audience.
Does not advertise the professional services of the author or any advocate.
Does not offer paid legal services, paid consultations, or commercial legal engagements through this repository or any associated channel.

It is:

A drafting aid for use by enrolled advocates who retain full professional responsibility for every pleading produced.
A reference implementation of open-source legal-tech infrastructure for Indian High Court practice.
Released under the Bar Council of India Rules, Part VI, Chapter II, Section IV, Rule 36 (Conduct and Etiquette — restriction on advertising and solicitation), to which the author and every Indian advocate is bound.

Every advocate using this plugin is reminded: the advocate retains full professional responsibility for the verification of facts, the accuracy of citations, the correctness of legal grounds, the propriety of the prayer, and the signature on every pleading filed. AI-generated drafting output is starting material, not a finished pleading.

License

MIT. See LICENSE for the full text.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 20 Commits
.claude-plugin		.claude-plugin
.github/workflows		.github/workflows
agents		agents
bench-config		bench-config
docs		docs
skills		skills
.gitignore		.gitignore
CHANGELOG.md		CHANGELOG.md
LICENSE		LICENSE
NOTICE.md		NOTICE.md
PRIVACY.md		PRIVACY.md
README.md		README.md
USAGE.md		USAGE.md

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indian-hc-drafting

🚀 Install — wolfgang_rush marketplace

Table of contents

What this plugin does

Bench coverage — all 25 Indian High Courts

Case-type skills (full inventory)

1. pil-draft — Public Interest Litigation (Article 226)

2. civil-wp-draft — Civil Writ Petition (Articles 226 / 227)

3. criminal-wp-draft — Criminal Writ Petition

4. criminal-appeal-draft — Criminal Appeal

5. application-482-draft — Application u/s 482 CrPC / Section 528 BNSS

6. anticipatory-bail-draft — Anticipatory Bail (Section 438 CrPC / Section 482 BNSS)

7. bail-draft — Regular Bail (Section 439 CrPC / Section 483 BNSS)

8. contempt-petition-draft — Civil and Criminal Contempt

9. first-appeal-draft — First Appeal (Civil)

10. second-appeal-draft — Second Appeal (Civil)

11. criminal-revision-draft — Criminal Revision (Section 397 / 401 CrPC / Sections 438 / 442 BNSS)

12. mact-draft — Motor Accident Claims Tribunal claim petition

13. mat-draft — Matrimonial petitions

Shared infrastructure skills

The 6-agent drafting pipeline

1. reader — first agent

2. format — second agent

3. drafter — third agent

4. verifier — fourth agent

5. refiner — fifth agent

6. overseer — sixth and final agent

Installation

Anthropic Plugin Marketplace (when available)

Verifying the install

Your first pleading — step-by-step walkthrough

Step 1 — create a case folder

Step 2 — copy the bench-config exemplar

Step 3 — open the case folder in Claude

Step 4 — invoke the skill

Step 5 — continue the pipeline

Step 6 — review, sign, file

The bench-config.md file

Why MIT License

MIT vs the alternatives

One-paragraph rationale

Compatibility statement

Sibling plugins

Why this exists

Roadmap

Contributing

Contact

Author and brand

Provenance and privilege statement

Compliance posture — Supreme Court e-Committee AI framework

What this plugin does — and does not — do under that framework

Disclaimer and Bar Council of India Rule 36 compliance

License

About

Topics

Resources

License

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Languages

1. `pil-draft` — Public Interest Litigation (Article 226)

2. `civil-wp-draft` — Civil Writ Petition (Articles 226 / 227)

3. `criminal-wp-draft` — Criminal Writ Petition

4. `criminal-appeal-draft` — Criminal Appeal

5. `application-482-draft` — Application u/s 482 CrPC / Section 528 BNSS

6. `anticipatory-bail-draft` — Anticipatory Bail (Section 438 CrPC / Section 482 BNSS)

7. `bail-draft` — Regular Bail (Section 439 CrPC / Section 483 BNSS)

8. `contempt-petition-draft` — Civil and Criminal Contempt

9. `first-appeal-draft` — First Appeal (Civil)

10. `second-appeal-draft` — Second Appeal (Civil)

11. `criminal-revision-draft` — Criminal Revision (Section 397 / 401 CrPC / Sections 438 / 442 BNSS)

12. `mact-draft` — Motor Accident Claims Tribunal claim petition

13. `mat-draft` — Matrimonial petitions

1. `reader` — first agent

2. `format` — second agent

3. `drafter` — third agent

4. `verifier` — fourth agent

5. `refiner` — fifth agent

6. `overseer` — sixth and final agent

The `bench-config.md` file

Packages