InventorLab

Turn what you're building into patents as you build.

You're building software. Some of what you build is novel — a clever workaround, a non-obvious combination of techniques, a pattern you invented because nothing existed. That's intellectual property, and it's walking out the door every time you git push without documenting it.

InventorLab is a Claude Code plugin that watches your code for novel inventions as you build, helps you articulate what makes them non-obvious, and drafts patent applications with figures — all from the terminal.

Install

claude plugin add @inventorlab/claude-plugin

What It Does

It watches while you work

Invention Radar runs in the background. When you write code that looks novel — a workaround for an AI limitation, an inverted design pattern, a technique you built because no library existed — it flags it:

"Interesting — instead of retrying on failure, this falls back to a completely different strategy. That failover pattern is non-obvious. Added to IP tracker. Try /disclosure-session when you're ready to dig in."

It helps you think

/ideation-session is divergent brainstorming. Describe a problem or a direction, and Claude explores it with you — importing patterns from other domains, inverting assumptions, following threads. Ideas that stick get tracked.

/disclosure-session is convergent. Point it at code you've already built, and it reads the mechanism, asks probing questions, and helps you articulate the inventive step: "What would a skilled engineer have done instead? Why wouldn't they have arrived at your approach?"

It writes the paperwork

/disclosure-form walks you through creating a formal Invention Disclosure Form — the document IP committees use to decide whether to file. Section by section, interactively.

/patent-draft generates a full provisional patent application: specification, claims, and figure specs. Point it at an IDF or IP tracker entries and it produces a filing-ready draft.

/patent-figures generates all patent figures as a project file for the built-in visual editor — system diagrams, flowcharts, conceptual frameworks, swimlanes, and data structure diagrams.

/patent-audit checks everything for consistency — reference numerals match between spec and figures, claim dependencies point to the right parents, nothing was double-shifted during editing.

It scans what you've already built

/invention-check full audits your entire codebase for novel approaches you may have missed. It looks for invention-around-failure patterns, non-obvious combinations, structural solutions to AI limitations, inverted patterns, and cross-domain applications.

The Pipeline

  Build something          ──→  Invention Radar detects signal
                                        │
  Or scan existing code    ──→  /invention-check full
                                        │
                                        ▼
                               Silent prior art search
                              (Novelty Gate — you see nothing)
                                        │
                              ┌─────────┴──────────┐
                              ▼                     ▼
                           PASSES                  FAILS
                        (flagged to you)         (silently filtered)
                              │
                              ▼
                     /disclosure-session
                  "What's the inventive step?"
                    + strategic questioning
                   informed by prior art
                              │
                  ┌───────────┼───────────┐
                  ▼           ▼           ▼
           /patent-draft  /disclosure   /whitepaper
            Provisional     -form       Technical
            application   Formal IDF    whitepaper
                  │                         │
             ┌────┴────┐                    ▼
             ▼         ▼                  Figures
       /patent-   /patent-             (auto-opens
        figures     audit                editor)
       (auto-opens             │
        editor)         │
             │          │
             └────┬─────┘
                  ▼
       Review with IP counsel → File

  /portfolio — see everything, what's covered, what needs attention
  /prior-art — search, refresh, overcome at any time

All Skills

Discovery

/invention-check — Scan your code for novel approaches

• /invention-check full — audit the entire codebase
• /invention-check recent — scan only recent changes
• /invention-check path/to/file.js — scan a specific file or directory
• When to use: Periodically (e.g., after completing a feature), or when you suspect you've built something novel but aren't sure. Good for catching inventions you didn't notice while building.

Invention Radar (always-on, no invocation needed) — Monitors your code as you write it. When you build something that looks even slightly novel, it silently drafts claims from multiple angles, runs a prior art search, and only flags it to you if it survives. You never see the false positives.

• When it activates: Automatically, during normal development. The sensitivity level (1-10, set during setup) controls how aggressively it searches.

Exploration

/ideation-session [topic or problem] — Divergent brainstorming

• /ideation-session adaptive rate limiting — explore a topic
• /ideation-session "how to prevent cache staleness" — explore a problem
• /ideation-session — open-ended: "What's on your mind?"
• When to use: When you're stuck, curious, or want to explore a design space before building. Uses cross-domain imports, inversions, constraint removal, and combinatorial thinking. Promising ideas get a quick prior art check before suggesting you track them.

/prior-art [topic or entry number] — Search for prior art

• /prior-art adaptive cache prefetching — search on a topic
• /prior-art 16 — search on IP Tracker entry #16
• /prior-art all — scan all entries that haven't been searched
• /prior-art refresh 16 — re-run search after the invention evolved
• /prior-art overcome 16 — evaluate whether recent changes overcome previously found prior art
• When to use: Before any formal IP work (disclosure, patent draft). Also when an invention evolves — new features may overcome old prior art or create new distinguishing elements. The Novelty Gate does quick searches automatically, but /prior-art does a thorough search with distinction analysis from multiple angles.

Articulation

/disclosure-session [file, topic, or entry number] — Articulate an invention

• /disclosure-session lib/cache/prefetch.js — start from code
• /disclosure-session "the adaptive cache prefetching system" — start from a topic
• /disclosure-session 16 — start from IP Tracker entry #16
• /disclosure-session — choose from IP Tracker entries
• When to use: When you've built something novel and want to articulate exactly what makes it non-obvious. Interactive and conversational — Claude Code reads your code, asks probing questions (informed by silent prior art research), and helps you find the inventive step in your own words.

Documentation

/disclosure-form [entry number or topic] — Create an Invention Disclosure Form

• /disclosure-form 16 — from IP Tracker entry
• /disclosure-form — choose interactively
• When to use: When working at a company that has an IP committee. The IDF is the internal document they use to decide whether to file. Walk-through format, section by section.

/patent-draft [entry numbers or IDF path] — Draft a provisional patent application

• /patent-draft 1,3,5 — cover specific IP Tracker entries
• /patent-draft invention-disclosures/adaptive-cache-prefetching.md — from an IDF
• /patent-draft — choose interactively
• When to use: When you're ready to draft a filing. Generates the full specification (broad-to-narrow with liberal "in some implementations" language and concrete examples), claims (informed by prior art search), and figures (auto-opens the editor). Review with IP counsel before filing.

/whitepaper [topic or entry numbers] — Generate a technical whitepaper

• /whitepaper "adaptive cache prefetching" — on a topic
• /whitepaper 11,27 — covering specific IP entries
• When to use: When you want to explain your system publicly — to peers, potential adopters, or the community. Also for defensive publication: establishing prior art that prevents others from patenting your approach. Different voice than a patent (honest about limitations, generous with citations, engaging narrative).

/patent-figures [spec file] — Generate patent figures

• /patent-figures PATENT-APPLICATION.md — from a spec
• /patent-figures — uses default spec location
• When to use: After drafting a patent application, or to regenerate figures after spec changes. Creates a project.json with all figures, runs the visual review loop, and auto-opens the figure editor.

/patent-audit [spec file] — Audit a patent application

• /patent-audit PATENT-APPLICATION.md — check a specific file
• When to use: Before submitting to IP counsel. Checks reference numeral consistency, claim support in the spec, figure alignment, and cross-references.

Management

/portfolio — View and manage your IP document portfolio

• /portfolio — dashboard showing all documents, status, and attention items
• /portfolio create patent 1,3,5 — create a new patent draft
• /portfolio create idf 11 — create a new IDF
• /portfolio create whitepaper "topic" — create a new whitepaper
• /portfolio update P-001 — review and update a specific document
• /portfolio check — scan for stale documents, uncovered entries, stale prior art
• When to use: To see the big picture — what's been captured, what's covered, what needs attention. Especially useful when managing multiple patents, IDFs, and whitepapers across many inventions.

Setup

/inventorlab-setup — Configure InventorLab for a new project

• When to use: Once, at the start of a project. Sets sensitivity level, output goals, creates working documents (IP Tracker, Claim Strategy Notebook, Prior Art Registry, Portfolio). Explains the invention boundary and USPTO compliance.

What makes InventorLab different

The Novelty Gate

Before flagging anything to you, Claude Code silently drafts claims from multiple angles (method, system, interaction — broad to narrow), searches for prior art against each claim, runs anticipation and obviousness analysis, and produces a survivability matrix. Only inventions that survive reach you. The IP Tracker stays high-signal, not a dump of everything that felt novel.

Prior Art Searching

• /prior-art [topic] — full search with distinction analysis from multiple angles
• /prior-art refresh [N] — re-search after an invention evolves
• /prior-art overcome [N] — evaluate whether new features overcome previously found prior art
• Prior art findings go to PRIOR-ART.md — a structured registry mapping findings to each IP Tracker entry
• Intellectual Firewall — prior art informs assessment only, never design. Teachings from prior art are never incorporated into your inventions.

Whitepapers and Defensive Publication

• /whitepaper [topic] — generate a technical whitepaper with literature search, Background and Related Work, honest Discussion section
• A whitepaper published publicly establishes prior art that prevents others from patenting the approaches it describes.

Portfolio Management

• /portfolio — dashboard of all your IP documents, their status, what they cover, what needs attention
• Tracks which IP Tracker entries are covered by which documents
• Flags stale prior art, uncovered entries, documents that need updating
• Cross-document consistency checks

The Invention Boundary

Claude Code assists but never invents. During IP work, if a response would cross from helping you develop YOUR idea into Claude Code generating a distinct idea of its own, it refuses and asks you to rephrase. Outside IP work, Claude Code can brainstorm freely — but if you later try to patent an idea that originated from Claude Code, it will flag that and decline.

Also Included

• Figure Editor — visual HTML editor for patent and whitepaper diagrams with orthogonal connector routing, multi-page tabs, SVG import, PDF export, layout optimizer
• Templates — patent application, IDF, and whitepaper templates
• CLAUDE.md snippet — conventions for passive IP tracking, prior art workflow, USPTO compliance, and the intellectual firewall

USPTO Compliance

All skills adhere to the USPTO's November 2025 Revised Inventorship Guidance for AI-Assisted Inventions. There is no special standard for AI-assisted inventions — the same conception test applies to all inventions. Claude Code functions as an assistive tool. The touchstone is whether the human inventor had the invention "clearly defined in the inventor's mind." Claude Code helps articulate and formalize; the user conceives, directs, and evaluates.

Provenance logs are maintained automatically during disclosure and ideation sessions, documenting who conceived what and what role Claude Code played — providing contemporaneous evidence of inventorship if ever needed.

License

MIT