Set up bharat-courts in Claude Desktop¶
This page walks you through giving Claude Desktop the ability to look up Indian court data for you — case status, orders, cause lists, and judgments going back to 1950 — so you can ask in plain English and get real answers pulled from the official eCourts portals and the public judgment archive.
You do not need to be a programmer. There are four short steps. Set it up once and it keeps working.
What you are actually installing
bharat-courts ships an Agent Skill — a small folder of instructions that teaches Claude how and when to use the tool. There is no separate plugin, no account to create, and no API key. Claude runs the bharat-courts software on your own computer when you ask it a court-data question.
Step 1 — Install Python and the package¶
Claude Desktop needs the bharat-courts software present on your computer so it can actually run searches. This is a one-time install.
Prerequisite: Python 3.11 or newer
bharat-courts requires Python 3.11+. If you do not already have it, download it from python.org and run the installer. On the first screen of the Windows installer, tick "Add Python to PATH" before clicking Install.
Once Python is installed, open a terminal (Terminal on macOS, Command Prompt or PowerShell on Windows) and run:
The two extras in the brackets are what make the assistant genuinely useful:
| Extra | What it adds | Why it matters to you |
|---|---|---|
ocr | Automatic CAPTCHA solving (the ddddocr engine) | The live eCourts portals are CAPTCHA-gated. With this, Claude solves them for you — no typing in squiggly letters by hand. |
archive | Historical archive support (DuckDB over the public AWS Open Data buckets) | Lets Claude search Supreme Court judgments from 1950 onward and 25 High Courts instantly, with no CAPTCHA and no rate limits. |
Installing both gives Claude access to live court data (current status, cause lists, in-progress orders) and the historical archive (past judgments, bulk research). That is the recommended setup.
If the command is not found
On some systems the command is pip3 instead of pip, or python3 -m pip install "bharat-courts[ocr,archive]". If none work, Python was likely not added to PATH during install — re-run the Python installer and make sure that box is ticked.
Step 2 — Generate the skill folder¶
bharat-courts can write its skill folder for you. In the same terminal, navigate to a folder you can find again (your home folder is fine) and run:
This copies the skill into a folder named:
(created inside whatever directory you ran the command from). The command prints the exact location it wrote to — note it down, you will point Claude Desktop at this folder in the next step.
Prefer to use the folder shipped inside the package?
The skill also lives inside the installed package itself, at bharat_courts/skill/ within your Python environment. Running install-skills is the simplest way to get a clean, easy-to-find copy, so we recommend that over hunting for the bundled folder.
Step 3 — Add the skill in Claude Desktop¶
Claude Desktop loads Agent Skills from its settings. Because Anthropic refines the Desktop interface from time to time, we will describe this in general terms rather than naming exact buttons that may change.
- Open Claude Desktop and go into its Settings.
- Find the area for Skills (sometimes presented under Capabilities).
- Add a skill and point it at the
bharat-courtsskill folder you created in Step 2 (the.claude/skills/bharat-courts/folder). - Make sure the skill is enabled.
Follow Anthropic's current instructions for the exact clicks
The precise menu names and the location of the Skills setting can change between Claude Desktop versions. For the up-to-date, step-by-step walkthrough straight from the vendor, see Anthropic's official Agent Skills documentation at docs.anthropic.com and the help centre at support.anthropic.com.
Step 4 — Verify it works¶
Start a new chat in Claude Desktop and ask a simple question, for example:
"Using bharat-courts, list the most recent Supreme Court judgments."
If everything is wired up, Claude will recognise the bharat-courts skill, run it, and come back with real results rather than saying it cannot access court data.
A good first test
The recent Supreme Court feed is the easiest thing to verify because it needs no CAPTCHA and no case details — just a clean check that the skill is connected. Once that works, move on to the things you actually need every day.
For dozens of ready-to-paste, plain-English prompts — finding a client's pending matters, pulling orders, checking tomorrow's cause list, researching past judgments — see the example prompts page.
Troubleshooting¶
Claude says it cannot find the tool, or the skill does nothing
The most common cause is that bharat-courts is installed in a different Python environment from the one Claude Desktop uses. Make sure you ran the pip install "bharat-courts[ocr,archive]" command in the same Python that is on your system PATH. Re-running that install command and then restarting Claude Desktop usually resolves it. Also confirm the skill is enabled in Settings and that you pointed it at the .claude/skills/bharat-courts/ folder (not its parent).
I see CAPTCHA errors when Claude searches the live portals
The live eCourts portals are protected by CAPTCHAs. Automatic solving comes from the ocr extra — if you installed plain bharat-courts without it, re-run:
CAPTCHA solving is automatic but not perfect; the tool retries with fresh attempts, so an occasional miss is normal and usually clears on a retry.
Historical / older judgment searches return nothing
Make sure the archive extra is installed (pip install "bharat-courts[archive]"). Also note the archive lags real time by a couple of months — for a judgment delivered in the last 2–3 months, ask Claude to check the live portal instead.
Prefer Claude Code?¶
If you work in a terminal or a code editor, the setup is even quicker and uses the same skill folder. See Set up in Claude Code.
For the full installation reference, including every available extra, see Installation.