astro-legal

Comprehensive legal policy generation for Astro sites

astro-legal is a static‑first Astro integration that scaffolds professional legal policy pages from a single config file.

It exists for one reason:

Give every site a clear, editable legal foundation without starting from zero.

No runtime middleware.
No policy overwrites.
No guessing.
No forced legal claims.

What this plugin does

On astro dev, the plugin:

• Ensures a legal.config.json file exists (first run only)
• Loads and normalises configuration safely (fail‑closed)
• Generates src/generated/legal.ts (the @legal runtime module)
• Scaffolds enabled policy routes exactly once
• Augments src/env.d.ts with @legal types
• Watches config-files/legal.config.json and generates new routes when you enable them

What this plugin does NOT do

• ❌ No runtime middleware
• ❌ No policy overwrites
• ❌ No legal guarantees or advice
• ❌ No auto‑publishing or deployment
• ❌ No layout‑less policy pages in v1

If configuration is invalid or disabled, no policies are generated.

Installation

npm install astro-legal

Setup

Run the interactive initializer:

npx astro-legal init

It will:

• Write config-files/legal.config.json
• Patch astro.config.* with the integration when it finds a standard Astro config file

After that, edit config-files/legal.config.json manually to turn on the policies you want and fill in the organisation, contact, and layout values. Saving the file during astro dev will create any newly enabled policy routes without forcing a restart.

Usage

Add the integration to your Astro config:

import { defineConfig } from "astro/config";
import astroLegal from "astro-legal";

export default defineConfig({
  integrations: [
    astroLegal()
  ]
});

Configuration location

On first run, the plugin ensures this file exists:

config-files/legal.config.json

Example configuration

{
  "enabled": true,
  "paths": {
    "base": "/legal",
    "layout": "/src/layouts/Layout.astro"
  },
  "effectiveDate": "2026-01-10",
  "contacts": {
    "legalEmail": "[email protected]",
    "privacyEmail": "[email protected]",
    "abuseEmail": "[email protected]",
    "lawEnforcementEmail": "[email protected]",
    "securityEmail": "[email protected]"
  },
  "organisation": {
    "name": "Example Company Ltd",
    "jurisdiction": "United Kingdom",
    "address": "123 Example Street, London, UK",
    "companyNumber": "12345678"
  },
  "policies": {
    "terms": true,
    "privacy": true,
    "csam": true,
    "abuse": true,
    "harassment": true,
    "content-moderation": true,
    "trust-safety": true,
    "security": true,
    "law-enforcement": true,
    "transparency": true,
    "vulnerability-disclosure": true,
    "incident-response": true,
    "gdpr": true,
    "ccpa": false,
    "uk-dpa": true,
    "data-retention": true,
    "data-processing": true,
    "subprocessors": false,
    "refunds": false,
    "billing": false,
    "pricing": false,
    "chargebacks": false,
    "financial-compliance": false,
    "dmca": true,
    "copyright": true,
    "trademark": true,
    "open-source": true,
    "user-content-license": true,
    "code-of-conduct": true,
    "ethics": true,
    "modern-slavery": true,
    "whistleblowing": true,
    "equal-opportunities": true,
    "api-usage": false,
    "ai-usage": false,
    "training-data": false,
    "automation": false,
    "third-party-services": true,
    "cookies": true,
    "acceptable-use": true,
    "disclaimer": true,
    "governing-law": true
  }
}

Generated output

On first run with enabled policies, the plugin scaffolds:

• src/pages/<base>/<policy>/index.astro
• src/generated/legal.ts

Each policy page:

• Uses your required Astro layout
• Includes an effective date
• Exposes organisation and contacts from @legal

Policy registry

Only policies registered in the template registry can be generated. To add a policy:

1. Create a renderer in src/templates/policies/
2. Register it in src/templates/index.ts
3. Enable it in legal.config.json

Failure behaviour

This plugin is intentionally fail‑closed.

If any of the following occur:

• Config file missing
• JSON invalid
• enabled: false
• paths.layout invalid

➡️ No policies are generated

Your dev server will continue normally.

License

MIT © Velohost UK Limited

Author

Built and maintained by Velohost UK Limited
https://velohost.co.uk/

Project homepage:
https://velohost.co.uk/plugins/astro-legal/