Hermes Legal Advisor

Free, multi-provider AI contract analysis for developers, freelancers, and small teams.

Feed it a contract - a .txt, .pdf, or .docx file - and it reads every clause, scores each one for risk, tells you which standard clauses are missing, suggests concrete replacement language for the risky ones, and gives you a final SIGN / NEGOTIATE / REJECT verdict. It remembers every contract it has ever analyzed, so it can tell you when a recurring counter-party's terms are getting worse over time.

It works with zero budget: a built-in offline rule engine needs no API key at all, and free tiers on Groq and Google Gemini give you full LLM-grade analysis at no cost. If you have a paid API key for a stronger model, you can plug that in too - it is always optional, never required.

Why this exists

Contract review tools either live inside a specific AI coding assistant, cost money per review, or only handle plain text. Hermes Legal Advisor is a standalone command-line tool and Python package: install it, point it at a real contract file, and get a structured answer - no subscription, no vendor lock-in, and it plugs straight into your GitHub workflow as a CI check.

Key Features

Risk Scoring

Install

pip install hermes-legal-advisor[all]

[all] pulls in every optional dependency (PDF/DOCX support, Groq, Gemini, OpenRouter clients). If you only need one provider, install a narrower extra instead, e.g. pip install hermes-legal-advisor[groq,pdf].

Or run from source:

git clone https://github.com/Lethe044/hermes-legal.git
cd hermes-legal
pip install -e ".[all]"

Pick a free provider

You do not need to configure anything to get started - the offline scanner always works. For deeper LLM-backed analysis, pick one:

# Groq - free tier, very fast
export GROQ_API_KEY=gsk_...          # https://console.groq.com/keys

# Gemini - generous free tier
export GEMINI_API_KEY=...            # https://aistudio.google.com/apikey

# OpenRouter - access to many :free models, plus paid ones if you want them
export OPENROUTER_API_KEY=sk-or-...  # https://openrouter.ai/keys

# Ollama - fully local, fully private, needs no internet after setup
ollama pull llama3.1 && ollama serve

Hermes Legal Advisor auto-detects whichever of these is configured, in that order, and falls back to the offline scanner if none are. Check what it sees:

hermes-legal providers

See docs/PROVIDERS.md for a full comparison and setup walkthrough.

Quick Start

hermes-legal analyze sample_contracts/freelance_contract.txt
hermes-legal analyze sample_contracts/nda_contract.txt --perspective vendor
hermes-legal analyze contract.pdf --output report.md --redline redline.md
hermes-legal analyze contract.docx --redline-docx redline.docx

Batch mode

hermes-legal batch ./contracts_folder

Produces a batch_summary.csv plus one Markdown report per file.

Version comparison

hermes-legal compare sample_contracts/freelance_contract.txt sample_contracts/freelance_contract_v2.txt

Watch mode

hermes-legal watch ./contracts_inbox

Chat mode

hermes-legal chat

Web dashboard (no CLI needed)

hermes-legal serve

Opens a browser tab at http://127.0.0.1:8765 where anyone can drag and drop a contract file and get an instant analysis - built for colleagues or clients who will never touch a terminal. Uses only Python's standard library, so it needs no extra install.

Generate a new contract

hermes-legal generate --list
hermes-legal generate nda --field party_a="Acme Inc." --field party_b="Beta LLC" --output nda.txt
hermes-legal generate freelance --interactive

Produces a ready-to-edit draft entirely offline, for free. Any field you don't supply is left as a clearly marked placeholder.

Customize for your firm

hermes-legal playbook init

Writes an example ~/.hermes-legal/playbook.yaml you can edit to set your firm name, override any clause's risk score or negotiation language, add entirely custom red-flag rules, or adjust the CRITICAL/HIGH/MEDIUM thresholds - all without touching a line of code. Every analyze, batch, and serve command picks it up automatically if present, or point at a specific file with --playbook path/to/file.yaml.

Professional PDF reports

hermes-legal analyze contract.pdf --output-pdf report.pdf

Requires pip install hermes-legal-advisor[pdfreport] (included in [all]).

Use it in CI

Drop this into any repository to get an automatic risk summary whenever a contract file changes in a pull request:

# .github/workflows/contract-review.yml
on:
  pull_request:
    paths: ["contracts/**"]

jobs:
  review:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: Lethe044/hermes-legal@main
        with:
          path: contracts/
          fail-on-risk: CRITICAL
          groq-api-key: ${{ secrets.GROQ_API_KEY }}

No API key configured? Leave the groq-api-key line out entirely - the action still runs, using the offline scanner.

Automatic Red Flags

• Termination notice under 7 days
• Uncapped liability on one party only
• IP assignment covering personal-time work
• Non-compete longer than 2 years or with worldwide scope
• Auto-renewal with under 30 days' cancellation window
• Arbitration/dispute costs borne entirely by one party
• Perpetual/indefinite confidentiality obligations

Project Structure

hermes-legal/
├── src/hermes_legal/
│   ├── providers/     # Groq, Gemini, OpenRouter, Ollama, offline rule engine
│   ├── ingest/         # .txt / .pdf / .docx readers
│   ├── analysis/       # orchestration, risk scoring, version diff
│   ├── reports/        # Markdown, CSV, DOCX redline generation
│   ├── memory/         # JSONL-backed contract history
│   ├── cli.py          # analyze / batch / compare / watch / chat / providers / generate / serve / playbook / history
│   ├── generator.py    # offline contract templates (NDA, freelance, employment, service)
│   ├── playbook.py     # firm-specific YAML customization
│   ├── webapp.py        # zero-dependency local web dashboard
│   ├── watch.py
│   └── chat.py
├── tests/
├── sample_contracts/
├── action.yml           # GitHub Action definition
└── docs/

Documentation

• docs/SETUP.md - installation and configuration in depth
• docs/PROVIDERS.md - free-tier provider comparison and setup
• docs/ADVANCED.md - the project's origin as a Hermes/Atropos hackathon entry, and the reinforcement-learning reward function used to train it
• CONTRIBUTING.md - how to add a provider, a rule, or a report format
• CHANGELOG.md - version history

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome - see CONTRIBUTING.md for the shape of a good contribution (a new red-flag pattern, a new provider, a new report format are all good first PRs).

Disclaimer

Hermes Legal Advisor provides contract analysis, not legal advice. Always consult a qualified attorney before signing any contract.