DutyBot: Your on-duty companion
Free, locally run AI for UK criminal legal definitions. Clear answers to natural-language questions — no long documents, just instant results.
Free and open-source. Non-commercial use only.
Features
Instant Legal Definitions
DutyBot explains UK criminal legal definitions in plain English. Ask a question, get a clear, structured answer — no trawling through documents.
Natural Language Queries
Ask questions in plain English, just as you would to a colleague.
Structured Breakdowns
Offence elements, key terminology, and practical notes — all clearly laid out.
Save Time
Turn legal language into digestible summaries in seconds.
Source-Checked Answers
DutyBot generates an answer, then searches legislation.gov.uk in the background to check it. When sources are found, they are displayed with direct links to the matching legislation.
Automatic Source-Checking
Every response is checked against legislation.gov.uk — no extra steps needed.
Transparent Sources
See how many sources were found and expand to view matching legislation titles, URLs, and snippets.
Trust But Verify
The sources panel tells you when a response has been checked, not just generated.
Free and Local
DutyBot runs entirely on your own machine. No cloud, no subscriptions, no data leaving your computer. Download from GitHub and run with Docker.
Zero Cloud Dependencies
Everything runs locally — your questions never leave your machine.
Free Forever
Open-source and non-commercial. No subscriptions, no paywalls, no hidden costs.
Works on Your Hardware
Runs on NVIDIA GPUs for speed, or CPU-only on any machine.
How It Works
DutyBot generates answers using an LLM, then checks them against official legislation sources.
Ask a Question
Type your question in plain English. For example: "What are the points to prove for Section 18 GBH?"
AI Generates an Answer
DutyBot uses a domain-adapted language model trained on UK criminal law to produce a clear, structured response.
Automatic Verification
In the background, DutyBot searches legislation.gov.uk to find official sources that match the answer.
Sources Displayed
If sources are found, a "Sources" panel appears showing how many matches were found on legislation.gov.uk with direct links.
Install DutyBot
DutyBot is free to run on your own machine. Just three steps.
1. Clone the repository
Download the project files from GitHub.
git clone https://github.com/dwain-barnes/dutybot.git && cd dutybot2. Start with Docker
Run on CPU (any machine) or with NVIDIA GPU acceleration.
# CPU mode (works on any machine)
docker compose up --build# GPU mode (NVIDIA, faster)
docker compose --profile cuda up --build --scale llama-server=03. Open in your browser
The model downloads automatically on first launch (~15 GB). Then open:
http://localhost:5000Requires Docker Desktop v24+ with Compose v2. Minimum 16 GB RAM.