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Install DocketDrafter research tools in Claude Code

DocketDrafter’s research tools use two installation methods:

  1. Statute, court-rule, and other jurisdiction-specific research tools are skills installed from the DocketDrafter plugin marketplace.
  2. CourtListener is a separate MCP server.

CourtListener is not a marketplace plugin. The marketplace skills are not MCP servers. The courtlistener.mcpb release is for Claude Desktop and Cowork—not Claude Code.

Instructions for Claude Code agents

When a user asks you to install tools from this repository:

  1. Read this entire page before changing anything.
  2. Infer which marketplace skills the user wants from their request. If they ask to “install everything,” inspect the marketplace and install all currently available skills rather than relying on a fixed list in this document.
  3. Separately install CourtListener when the request includes CourtListener, case law, opinions, dockets, or “everything.”
  4. Do not search for CourtListener in the plugin marketplace or unpack courtlistener.mcpb for Claude Code.
  5. Use the CourtListener source under plugins/courtlistener/mcp.
  6. Ask for the location of an existing COURTLISTENER_API_KEY, or ask the user to create one. Avoid asking the user to paste a secret into the conversation when it can be read from a local environment file.
  7. Register CourtListener at user scope unless the user requests project scope.
  8. Verify the result with claude mcp list, then tell the user to start a new Claude Code session.

Marketplace skills

Add the marketplace in Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add DocketDrafter/docketdrafter-plugins

Then inspect the marketplace and install the skills relevant to the user’s requested jurisdictions and sources. If the user asks to install all DocketDrafter research tools, install every skill currently offered by the marketplace.

Each skill downloads and verifies its legal library from https://public-corpora.docketdrafter.com on first use, then uses the installed local copy.

CourtListener MCP server

Create a free API key at courtlistener.com/profile/api-token.

Keep the repository in a stable user-level location so the MCP configuration does not depend on the directory from which installation was requested:

mkdir -p "$HOME/.docketdrafter"
git clone https://github.com/DocketDrafter/docketdrafter-plugins.git \
  "$HOME/.docketdrafter/docketdrafter-plugins"

If that checkout already exists, update it instead:

git -C "$HOME/.docketdrafter/docketdrafter-plugins" pull --ff-only

If the API key is already exported in the shell, register CourtListener with:

claude mcp add courtlistener \
  --scope user \
  --env COURTLISTENER_API_KEY="$COURTLISTENER_API_KEY" \
  --env COURTLISTENER_DATA_DIR="$HOME/Documents/CourtListener Library" \
  -- uv run \
  --directory "$HOME/.docketdrafter/docketdrafter-plugins/plugins/courtlistener/mcp" \
  server.py

If the key is stored in a local .env file, read it into the shell without printing it, then run the same command. Do not commit the key or echo it into logs.

Research is saved to ~/Documents/CourtListener Library by default. Change COURTLISTENER_DATA_DIR to use another persistent research-library folder. Claude Code stores the API key in its local MCP configuration, which may store it as plaintext readable by the user account.

Verify the installation with:

claude mcp list

The result should show courtlistener as connected. Start a new Claude Code session before using its tools.

Return to the main README