the ediscovery claw

E-Discovery costs $3,000+ per GB when outsourced. edisclaw processes, deduplicates, culls, and searches ESI collections locally for a fraction of the cost—gi...

Security Scan

The skill is internally coherent: it simply wraps a CLI named edisclaw (installed from a third‑party Homebrew tap) and its SKILL.md contains usage instructions that align with the described e‑discovery functionality — however, because the actual binary is installed from an external tap and some Pro features imply network access and onboarding, review the install source and runtime network/credential behavior before trusting it with sensitive data.

Purpose & Capability

The name/description match the instructions and required binary. The skill only requires the edisclaw binary and provides commands for ingesting, deduplicating, culling, searching, reviewing, and producing ESI, which is coherent with an e‑discovery tool.

Instruction Scope

SKILL.md restricts runtime behavior to invoking the edisclaw CLI and describes local storage (~/.edisclaw). However, several Pro features (e.g., --source gdrive, TAR active learning, upgrade flow) imply network interaction, OAuth or other credentials and potential remote service communication that are not described or declared in requires.env. The instructions do not tell the agent to read unrelated system files or env vars.

Install Mechanism

Install is via a third‑party Homebrew tap (legal-tools/tap) which will create an edisclaw binary. Homebrew taps are common, but are less vetted than core Homebrew packages — the install writes a binary to the system and its behavior depends entirely on that compiled code (which is not included in the skill bundle).

Credentials

The skill declares no required environment variables or credentials, which matches an instruction-only wrapper that invokes a local CLI. That said, certain optional Pro features likely require OAuth tokens or account credentials (e.g., Google Drive ingestion, upgrade/pro features) but these are not declared by the skill.

Persistence & Privilege

always is false and the skill does not request elevated or system‑wide privileges. The tool stores data under ~/.edisclaw which is expected for this application; no instructions indicate modification of other skills or global agent settings.

Assessment

This skill looks like a straightforward wrapper for a CLI tool and is coherent with its stated purpose, but you should verify a few things before installing or running it on sensitive data: 1) Inspect the Homebrew formula in the legal-tools/tap repo (and the linked GitHub project) to confirm the source code, build steps, and checksums — don't blindly trust a third‑party tap. 2) Expect network activity for 'Pro' features (OAuth flows for Google Drive, upgrade checks, model training telemetry). Ask what endpoints the binary contacts and what credentials/scopes it requests; prefer interactive OAuth over pasting secrets into env vars. 3) Test the binary in an isolated environment (VM or container) with non‑sensitive sample data to confirm that free‑tier operation keeps data local as claimed. 4) Review the privacy/license/payment terms shown by edisclaw during 'upgrade pro' to understand what data might be uploaded or logged. 5) Check ~/.edisclaw contents and file permissions after a run to ensure no unexpected data exfiltration. If you need higher assurance, request the upstream project's source and build artifacts and/or build the binary yourself from the repository before installing.

edisclaw

E-Discovery shouldn't cost more than the lawsuit.

Firms spend $3,000–$18,000 per gigabyte outsourcing e-discovery. edisclaw brings the entire processing pipeline into your terminal—collect, deduplicate, cull by keyword and date, tag for relevance, and export production-ready load files. All locally. All under your control.

You don't need a vendor. You need a command.

Who it's for: Litigators handling discovery, paralegals managing document review, solo attorneys who can't afford Relativity, and in-house teams running internal investigations.

What it replaces: $50K+ vendor invoices, Relativity seats you don't need, and the 3-week turnaround that kills your case timeline.

---

Pricing

Feature	Free	Pro ($49/mo)	Litigation ($199/mo)
ESI processing	Up to 1 GB	Up to 50 GB	Unlimited
Deduplication	MD5 only	MD5 + fuzzy near-dedup	Full near-dedup + email threading
Keyword search	Basic grep	Regex + proximity + stemming	Full-text index + Boolean
Date culling	✅	✅	✅
File type filtering	✅	✅	✅
TAR (Technology Assisted Review)	—	Seed set + prioritize	Full active learning loop
Load file export	—	Concordance (.dat)	Concordance + Relativity + EDRM XML
Email threading	—	Basic	Full conversation threading
OCR for scanned docs	—	✅	✅ + batch
Matters	1 active	10 active	Unlimited
Team reviewers	—	—	Up to 15
Audit trail	Basic	Full	Full + court-ready certification

edisclaw upgrade pro — 14-day free trial.

---

Core Commands

Collection & Ingestion

• edisclaw ingest ./custodian_files/ --matter "Smith v. Jones"
• edisclaw ingest mailbox.pst --matter "Smith v. Jones" --custodian "J. Smith"
• edisclaw ingest ./emails/ --format mbox --matter "Smith v. Jones"
• edisclaw ingest --source gdrive --custodian "CEO" --matter "Investigation" (Pro)
• edisclaw status --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Processing progress

Deduplication

• edisclaw dedup --matter "Smith v. Jones" — MD5 exact dedup
• edisclaw dedup --matter "Smith v. Jones" --near — Near-dedup (Pro)
• edisclaw dedup report --matter "Smith v. Jones" — How much was removed

Culling & Filtering

• edisclaw cull --matter "Smith v. Jones" --date-from 2024-01-01 --date-to 2025-12-31
• edisclaw cull --matter "Smith v. Jones" --filetype pdf,docx,xlsx,msg
• edisclaw cull --matter "Smith v. Jones" --exclude-filetype jpg,png,gif — Remove images
• edisclaw cull --matter "Smith v. Jones" --min-size 1KB — Remove empty/tiny files
• edisclaw cull report --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Culling summary

Keyword Search

• edisclaw search "merger" --matter "Smith v. Jones"
• edisclaw search "merger AND acquisition" --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Boolean
• edisclaw search "merger w/5 acquisition" --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Proximity (Pro)
• edisclaw search --terms-file keywords.txt --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Batch keyword list
• edisclaw search --report --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Keyword hit report

Review & Tagging

• edisclaw review start --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Interactive review mode
• edisclaw tag --id DOC-001234 --tags "responsive,hot" — Tag documents
• edisclaw tag --id DOC-001234 --privilege "attorney-client" — Privilege tag
• edisclaw review stats --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Review progress

Technology Assisted Review (Litigation)

• edisclaw tar seed --matter "Smith v. Jones" --count 200 — Generate seed set
• edisclaw tar train --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Train model on coded docs
• edisclaw tar prioritize --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Rank by likely relevance
• edisclaw tar validate --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Statistical validation
• edisclaw tar report --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Court-defensible TAR report

Production

• edisclaw produce --matter "Smith v. Jones" --tag "responsive" --format concordance
• edisclaw produce --matter "Smith v. Jones" --bates-prefix "SMITH" --start 000001
• edisclaw produce --matter "Smith v. Jones" --redact-pii --format pdf (Litigation)
• edisclaw produce --matter "Smith v. Jones" --format edrm-xml (Litigation)
• edisclaw produce log --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Production log

Reporting

• edisclaw stats --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Full matter statistics
• edisclaw stats --matter "Smith v. Jones" --by-custodian — Per custodian breakdown
• edisclaw stats --matter "Smith v. Jones" --by-filetype — File type distribution
• edisclaw timeline --matter "Smith v. Jones" — Document timeline visualization

---

Common Workflows

Standard E-Discovery Pipeline

# 1. Ingest custodian data
edisclaw ingest ./custodian_smith/ --matter "Case-2026" --custodian "Smith"
edisclaw ingest ./custodian_jones/ --matter "Case-2026" --custodian "Jones"

# 2. Deduplicate
edisclaw dedup --matter "Case-2026"

# 3. Date & file type culling
edisclaw cull --matter "Case-2026" --date-from 2023-01-01 --date-to 2025-12-31

# 4. Keyword search
edisclaw search --terms-file agreed_keywords.txt --matter "Case-2026"

# 5. Review & tag
edisclaw review start --matter "Case-2026"

# 6. Produce
edisclaw produce --matter "Case-2026" --tag "responsive" --bates-prefix "PROD" --start 000001

---

Notes

• All data stored locally in ~/.edisclaw/ — ESI never leaves your machine on Free tier
• Processing speeds: ~2 GB/hour on Free, ~10 GB/hour on Pro (parallelized)
• Supports: PST, MBOX, EML, MSG, PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, TXT, CSV, HTML, images
• Combine with privilegeclaw for automated privilege detection
• Combine with batesclaw for advanced Bates numbering workflows
• Court-defensible audit logs on all tiers

Security & Compliance

• No data transmitted externally on Free tier
• Pro/Litigation: encrypted API for TAR models only (no document content sent)
• EDRM framework compliant
• Chain of custody logging: edisclaw audit --matter "Smith v. Jones"
• Defensibility report: edisclaw defensibility-report --matter "Smith v. Jones" (Litigation)