Architecture Overview

PHX Terminal pairs an intelligent desktop client — the Hover Opaque Application — with a secure, multi-tenant backend designed to behave like an operating system for legal workflows. The backend is engineered around four architectural principles that together deliver the scalability, resilience, and compliance that sensitive legal operations demand.

At a Glance

flowchart TB
  subgraph Desktop["Lawyer's Desktop"]
    HOA["Hover Opaque Application<br/>(AI Computer Vision overlay)"]
    APPS["Modern + legacy apps<br/>web · native · Citrix/VMware"]
    HOA -. observes / injects .-> APPS
  end
  subgraph Core["Core Platform — microservices"]
    AI["AI services<br/>CV · NLP · LLM · OCR/ICR"]
    ORCH["Workflow orchestration"]
    AUDIT["Audit & compliance"]
  end
  subgraph Cloud["Hybrid Cloud"]
    PUB["Public cloud<br/>scale · AI workloads"]
    PRIV["Private / on-prem<br/>privileged data"]
  end
  ECO["Developer Sandbox + Marketplace"]
  HOA <-->|events| Core
  Core --> Cloud
  Core --> ECO

The four principles

Principle	What it provides	Why it matters in legal tech
Microservices	Independent, specialized services communicating via APIs	Fault isolation and independent scaling for surges (e-discovery, peak filing)
Event-Driven	Real-time reaction to state changes, loose coupling	Built-in auditability and decoupled, resilient workflows
Offline-First	Full functionality without constant connectivity	Productivity in courtrooms, remote sites, and restricted networks
Hybrid Cloud	Public + private/on-prem deployment	Data residency and sovereignty for privileged information

High-level component flow

The platform processes work as a pipeline that begins on the lawyer’s desktop and flows into the backend ecosystem:

Desktop client — the Hover Opaque Application observes workflows, recognizes UI elements, and captures or injects data across applications.
Event ingestion — every meaningful action generates an event (see Event-Driven Architecture).
Microservices — specialized services handle authentication, AI processing, workflow orchestration, document analysis, billing synchronization, compliance monitoring, and audit logging.
Synchronization layer — local-first data is reconciled with the cloud as connectivity allows (see Sync & Offline-First).
Hybrid deployment — sensitive, privileged data stays in private/on-prem environments while scalable workloads run in public cloud.
Ecosystem — the Developer Sandbox and Marketplace extend the platform with third-party legal applications.

Designed for the realities of legal work

The legal domain is unusually demanding: data is highly sensitive, continuity is non-negotiable, and regulatory obligations dictate where data may live. The architecture answers each of these directly — fault isolation keeps a single failure from halting a firm’s work, independent scaling absorbs unpredictable workloads, offline-first keeps lawyers productive anywhere, and the hybrid model keeps privileged data within legal and geographic boundaries.