Coupled-cluster methods offer unprecedented accuracy for a wide range of chemically important properties, but the steep scaling of computational cost with system size makes widespread use chal-lenging. Local approximations, building on the short-range nature of electron correlation effects in insulators, help a great deal, but are much more complicated than their canonical counterparts. In this work we discuss an automated implementation scheme for local coupled-cluster methods, based on an interpreter and an underlying representation of sparse tensors. We demonstrate the efficacy of the approach through implementation of a very wide range of singles-and-doubles-based coupled-cluster schemes. © 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4798940]