claude-patent-creator-standalone

Claude Patent Creator

An AI-powered patent creation and analysis system for Claude Code.

I built this because I needed to file a patent myself. I used AI to build the system, used the system to file the patent, and it worked. Now it's open source so anyone can use it. You do not need to be a lawyer or a programmer. If you can describe your idea in a chat window, you can use this.

In plain terms, this tool lets you:

• Ask patent-rule questions in plain English. "Do my claims have to be numbered?" "How long can the abstract be?" You get the actual rule, with a citation, in about a second. (Under the hood it searches the MPEP, the examiner's rulebook, plus the patent statutes and regulations.)
• Find out whether your idea is actually new. Search more than 100 million existing patents worldwide for anything close to your invention. This is called a prior art search, and it is the single most important step — it is how you learn whether a patent is even worth pursuing.
• Get your draft checked before a human ever bills you an hour. The tool reads your claims and application the way an examiner would and flags the mechanical problems: unclear wording, missing sections, an abstract that is too long. It also tells you which checks it did not run, so a clean report means what it says.
• Make the drawings. Patent-style diagrams and flowcharts from a description, no design software.
• Go from "here is my idea" to a reviewable draft application. A guided workflow takes your description (or even your source code), hunts for prior art, drafts claims and a specification, checks everything, and hands you a package a patent professional can review quickly — for US or European filing.

New to the vocabulary? Every term this page uses is explained in the Glossary in plain English.

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What this tool will and will not do — read this first

This tool is built for people who cannot afford a mistake, so it is honest to a fault. Know what you are getting:

• It will tell you "no." If the search finds your idea already exists, the tool's job is to show you the evidence and save you the filing fee — not to flatter you into spending money. A well-reasoned "this is not new, and here is why" is the tool working, not failing.
• It never says "verified" loosely. Every automated check reports what it ran and what it skipped. If a report looks clean, you can trust that the words mean exactly what they say.
• It does not file anything for you. You review, you decide, you file. The tool prepares; you commit.
• It is not a lawyer and does not give legal advice. What it produces is a well-prepared draft plus organized evidence — built so that a patent professional's review is fast and cheap instead of slow and expensive. For anything you intend to file, have a registered patent practitioner look at it. The point of this tool is to make that look-over affordable, not to skip it.
• Some judgments are human-only. Whether your invention is "non-obvious" and whether it is the kind of thing patent law protects at all are legal judgments no software makes reliably. The tool arms you for those conversations; it does not have them for you.

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Table of Contents

• What this tool will and will not do
• Quick Start
• What Can I Actually Do With This?
• How It Works
• Installation Options
• CLI Commands
• MCP Tools Reference
• Skills, Agents, and Slash Commands
• Configuration
• Requirements
• Architecture
• Performance
• Known Issues
• Glossary
• Roadmap
• Contributing
• Credits
• License

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Quick Start

Never used Claude Code? It's Anthropic's AI assistant that runs in a terminal or as a desktop app — install it first (a paid Claude subscription is the only cost to start). Then come back here; setup is one command and the tool talks you through the rest.

Pick the path that fits your setup. All three get you to the same place.

Option A: Claude Code Plugin (Easiest)

If you're already using Claude Code, this is the fastest way in:

# Add the marketplace and install
/plugin marketplace add RobThePCGuy/Claude-Patent-Creator
/plugin install claude-patent-creator-standalone@claude-patent-creator

# Run setup
/claude-patent-creator-standalone:setup-patent-system

Option B: One-Line Install

pip install git+https://github.com/RobThePCGuy/Claude-Patent-Creator.git && patent-creator setup

This handles everything automatically: installs dependencies, detects your GPU, downloads MPEP PDFs (~500MB), builds the search index, and registers the MCP server with Claude Code. Restart Claude Code when it finishes.

Option C: Manual Install

git clone https://github.com/RobThePCGuy/Claude-Patent-Creator.git
cd Claude-Patent-Creator

# Optional: use a virtual environment
python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # Linux/macOS
venv\Scripts\activate     # Windows

pip install -e .
patent-creator setup

Verify It Worked

After any install path, run:

patent-creator health

You should see a status report showing which components are ready. If something's off, the output will tell you what to fix.

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What Can I Actually Do With This?

Here are some real examples. You can type these directly in Claude Code and the right skill or tool kicks in automatically. Say it in your own words — the "what to say" column is a starting point, not a required incantation.

What you want to do	What to say	What happens
Find out if a rule applies to you	"Search MPEP for claim definiteness requirements" — or just "do my claims have to be written a certain way?"	The tool searches the examiner's rulebook and returns the relevant sections, with citations you can read yourself
See if your idea already exists	"Search for patents about [your idea]" — e.g. "self-heating coffee mug"	Searches 100M+ existing patents and shows you the closest matches, so you know what you're up against
Get your draft claims checked	"Review these claims" (paste them in)	Flags unclear wording, terms used before they're introduced, and structural problems — the mechanical mistakes an examiner rejects first
Check a whole application	/full-review	Runs the claims, description, and formatting checks together and reports everything at once
Go from idea to draft application	/create-patent	A guided workflow: describe the invention, the tool searches prior art, drafts, checks, and assembles a reviewable package (typically about an hour)
Make a drawing	"Create a block diagram showing [your system]"	Produces a patent-style figure, no design software needed
Dig deep on whether your idea is new	"Conduct a prior art search for [your invention]"	A thorough multi-angle hunt through existing patents, with an honest verdict on what it found

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How It Works

Everything from here down gets progressively more technical. You do not need any of it to use the tool — the sections above plus the Glossary are enough. This part is for developers, patent professionals, and the curious.

The system has two modes that can work independently or together:

MCP Server is the engine. It exposes 20+ tools that any MCP-compatible client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, etc.) can call programmatically. These tools handle search, analysis, and diagram generation.

Claude Code Plugin adds the interactive layer. Skills activate automatically based on what you're doing. Agents handle long-running tasks in the background. Slash commands give you quick access to common workflows.

Under the hood, patent regulation search uses a hybrid approach: FAISS vector search finds semantically similar content, BM25 lexical search catches exact terminology matches, and a cross-encoder reranker sorts the combined results by relevance. Patent search goes through Google BigQuery's public patent dataset.

You (Claude Code) ──> MCP Server ──> Search / Analysis / Diagrams
                           │
            ┌──────────────┼──────────────┐
            v              v              v
     MPEP/USC/CFR     BigQuery        Graphviz
     (hybrid RAG)    (100M+ patents)   (diagrams)

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Installation Options

1. Installs Python package dependencies
2. Detects your hardware (NVIDIA GPU, Apple Silicon, or CPU-only)
3. If a GPU is detected, uninstalls CPU-only PyTorch and installs the GPU version
4. Restarts the setup process with GPU-enabled PyTorch
5. Downloads MPEP, 35 USC, and 37 CFR PDFs (~500MB) from the USPTO
6. Builds the hybrid search index (FAISS + BM25) with GPU acceleration if available
7. Registers the MCP server with Claude Code

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # Linux/macOS
venv\Scripts\activate     # Windows

pip install git+https://github.com/RobThePCGuy/Claude-Patent-Creator.git && patent-creator setup

If you go this route, remember to activate the venv before running any manual commands. Claude Code handles activation automatically.

claude --plugin-dir ./Claude-Patent-Creator

This loads the plugin directly from your local checkout without installing from the marketplace.

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CLI Commands

patent-creator setup             # Full setup wizard (downloads, builds index, registers MCP)
patent-creator health            # System health check (shows what's working and what isn't)
patent-creator status            # Same as health
patent-creator verify-config     # Check Claude Code MCP configuration
patent-creator serve             # Run the MCP server manually
patent-creator rebuild-index     # Rebuild the MPEP search index
patent-creator download-mpep     # Download MPEP PDFs only
patent-creator download-all      # Download all sources (MPEP + 35 USC + 37 CFR)
patent-creator check-bigquery    # Test BigQuery connection

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MCP Tools Reference

Search

Tool	What it does
search_mpep	Hybrid RAG search across MPEP, 35 USC, and 37 CFR with filters
get_mpep_section	Pull full content of a specific MPEP section
search_patents_google	Full-text keyword search worldwide, claims included (recommended; free SerpApi key, 250 searches/month)
search_patents_bigquery	Keyword search fallback when no SerpApi key is set (~$2 a search past the free monthly TiB)
get_patent_bigquery	Get details on a specific patent (claims by default; abstract/description opt-in)
get_patents_bigquery	Get details on up to 50 patents in one query, same cost as one
search_patents_by_cpc_bigquery	Search by CPC classification code
search_uspto_api	Search via the USPTO API
get_uspto_patent	Get patent details from USPTO