Arqon

Local-first AI study assistant for Irish law — built for FE-1 exam preparation, starting with Constitutional Law. Runs entirely on-device with no paid API required.

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Features

• Chat study mode with inline citations
• Case brief generator
• Exam skeleton generator — Issue · Rule · Structure · Counterarguments · Conclusion
• Quiz mode
• Document ingestion — upload PDFs, HTML, plain text, Markdown
• Instant paste analysis — interrogate any passage on the fly
• Sources panel — every response backed by traceable context
• Refusal on missing context — no hallucinated legal claims

Why it works better than generic chat for Irish law

Citation-first retrieval means every answer is anchored to your source documents. If the context is absent, the model refuses rather than guesses — critical for exam-grade accuracy.

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Stack

Layer	Tools
LLM	Ollama (local, no API cost)
Vector DB	Chroma
Embeddings	SentenceTransformers
Backend	FastAPI
UI	Streamlit

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Requirements

• Python 3.12 or 3.13 (3.14 not yet supported by this stack)
• Ollama installed locally

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Setup

pyenv install 3.12 && pyenv local 3.12   # if needed

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
pip install -r requirements.txt
cp .env.example .env

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Ollama

ollama pull llama3.1:latest
ollama serve

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Run

Terminal 1 — backend

source .venv/bin/activate
uvicorn app.server:app --reload --port 8000

Terminal 2 — UI

source .venv/bin/activate
streamlit run ui/streamlit_app.py
# http://localhost:8501

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Add Law Sources

Place files in data/raw/ (.html · .pdf · .txt · .md) and ingest from the UI.

Recommended naming convention:

case__Ryan_v_AG__1965__courts_ie.html
statute__Bunreacht__1937__irishstatutebook.html

Minimum viable corpus for Constitutional Law:

• Bunreacht na hÉireann full text
• 15–30 landmark constitutional cases

For a pre-populated deployment, place curated files in data/raw/starter_pack/ and ingest before publishing — users get instant answers on first load.

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Scope

Strongest on FE-1 Constitutional Law. Extendable to Contract, Criminal, Equity, and other FE-1 papers by adding the relevant source documents.

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Disclaimer: Educational tool only — not legal advice. Verify all claims against official sources.