alkhatibdev/dpolens

**Give your AI coding assistant access to your organisation's privacy policies and the law,
with exact, versioned citations. A self-hosted MCP server.**
---
> ### Status: pre-release
>
> There is no published image yet. What runs today is a whole instance from source:
> docker compose up starts Postgres, the HTTP API, the dashboard and the MCP server, with
> GDPR and the UAE's data protection law loaded and the embedding model inside the image,
> and your assistant can search them. The UAE law is there in Arabic, which prevails, and in
> its official English translation, and a question can be asked in either language. In the
> dashboard you sign in, choose which laws apply to your organisation, read the library, add
> the people you work with, decide what each role allows, and make the tokens your assistants
> use. Until somebody chooses, every search covers both laws. A DPO sees what was asked this
> week and what answered it, reads every question with the personal data taken out, checks
> the governance log and exports it for an auditor, and sees how the instance is set up.
> The command line reads your own policies, Word or Markdown, into clauses with keys, and
> shows what a reviewer would need to settle. Uploading them in the dashboard is planned
> for v0.1.
>
> Watch the repository to know when v0.1 lands. Interfaces (the HTTP API, the pack format,
> the database schema) change without notice until 1.0.
---
Getting it running
You need Git, Docker with Compose, and an assistant that speaks MCP (Claude Code, Cursor or
VS Code).
**1. Get the code and start an instance**
The first up builds the images and loads GDPR and the UAE law, which takes a few minutes.
After that it takes seconds. When it returns, docker compose ps shows db, api,
dashboard and mcp as healthy.
**2. Create yourself an administrator**
This is the only account made on the command line. Everyone else is added in the
dashboard, and gets a one-time link to choose their own password.
**3. Open the dashboard and make a token**
Go to http://localhost:8080 and sign in with that email and
password. The first time, it asks which laws apply to your organisation: tick them, or decide
later, and until somebody chooses every search covers both. Under Tokens, create a token for
your assistant. It starts with dpol_ and is shown once, so copy it now.
The library holds every law loaded, clause by clause and in each of its languages, with a
search box for asking it in your own words. Users and roles is where you add the people you
work with and decide what each role allows. Overview shows how much was asked, what answered
it and what found nothing, and Logs holds every question asked and every change made to the
instance. Selected laws changes which laws a search covers, and Settings shows how the
instance is set up, with docs/configuration.md saying how to change
it.
**4. Connect your assistant**
For Claude Code, install the plugin:
The plugin needs two settings, the server address and your token. Open Claude Code and run
/plugin configure dpolens@dpolens, keep the default address (http://localhost:8765/mcp)
and paste the token. The token is kept in your operating system's credential store, not in a
file. Restart Claude Code, and /mcp lists dpolens as connected.
For Cursor and VS Code, clients/ has the configuration.
**5. Ask a question**
Ask your assistant how long you may keep a deleted account, or whether you need consent to
log an IP address. The answer quotes the clause it relies on and cites it.
**If docker compose up stops**
docker compose ps -a shows which service stopped, and the end of its log says why, in one
line that names the cause and what to do about it:
The usual cause is a password the database refuses. The database keeps the passwords that
were in .env when it was first created, so writing a new .env afterwards does not change
them. Put that .env back if you still have it. If you don't, starting over deletes the local
database, and with it every user, token and log entry on the instance:
After pulling a newer version, start it with docker compose up -d --build. Without