Developers & AI tools

overview.legal is built to be read by machines as well as people: 8,000+ documents of EU data protection law — legislation, case law, 3,300+ enforcement decisions with fine metadata, guidance and news — cross-linked by topic and citation, and exposed as context bundles, a REST API and an MCP server. Free to use; get an API key for higher limits.

Context bundles (markdown)

One curated, cited markdown file per topic or per law — drop it into your LLM's context, RAG store or project knowledge:

GET /topics/{slug}/context.md — topic bundle: editorial overview + key law text + case law + enforcement + guidance. Example: /topics/consent/context.md (?lang=nl for Dutch)
GET /laws/{law}/context.md — full text of a law, cited per provision. Example: /laws/gdpr/context.md — law slugs: gdpr, avg, ai-act, dsa, nis2, uavg, …
GET /llms.txt — site summary for AI assistants

MCP server

Connect Claude, or any MCP-capable tool, directly to the corpus. Streamable HTTP, stateless, no auth required (optional Authorization: Bearer olk_… for higher limits):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "overview-legal": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://overview.legal/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Tools exposed:

search_legal — hybrid search across all content types
get_document — full text of one document with topics + citation counts
get_citations — citation graph (law articles ↔ cases ↔ decisions)
get_topic_context — the full topic context bundle as markdown
enforcement_stats — GDPR fine statistics by article, country, authority, year

REST API

Endpoint	What it does
`GET /api/hybrid-search?q=…`	Hybrid full-text + semantic search. Params: `types`, `topics`, `language`, `limit`, `offset`
`GET /api/similar?id=…`	Semantically similar documents (pgvector)
`GET /api/citations/{id}`	Citation graph for a document
`POST /api/ask`	RAG answer with citations, JSON body `{"q": "…"}` (quota: 5/day anonymous, 25 with account, 100 with API key)
`GET /api/stats`	Live corpus counts

curl "https://overview.legal/api/hybrid-search?q=consent+cookies&types=case-law,enforcement&limit=5" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer olk_YOUR_KEY"

curl -X POST https://overview.legal/api/ask \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer olk_YOUR_KEY" \
  -d '{"q": "When is consent freely given under the GDPR?"}'

API keys & limits

Anonymous: 60 requests/min per IP on search/citations, 120/min on similar.
With a free API key: 300 requests/min per key, usage visible in your account.
Keys are free while the platform grows. Heavy or commercial integrations: mention it via the contact below so we can plan capacity (a paid tier with SLAs will follow demand).

Fair use

Content is aggregated from official sources (EUR-Lex, curia.europa.eu, rechtspraak.nl, EDPB, national DPAs) and organized by overview.legal; it is legal information, not legal advice.
Attribute answers and datasets to overview.legal with a link to the canonical URL.
No bulk scraping of HTML pages — the bundles and API exist so you don't have to.