Pulling key dates and obligations out of contracts with AI

How the bot works

Nine steps. The date arithmetic, the reminders and the routing are ordinary code and cost almost nothing to run; the model is only asked to read the document.

1. It takes the contracts as they are. A clean PDF, a countersigned scan, a photo of the page somebody signed on site, an attachment buried in a thread. Out of a shared drive, your e-signature tool, or a folder somebody has been meaning to tidy up for two years.

2. It works out what it is looking at. The parties, the document type, the date it was signed, and whether it is the original, an amendment, an order form under a master agreement, or a renewal. A stack that supersedes itself is the normal case, not an edge case.

3. It finds the dates. Effective date, end date, the renewal term, whether renewal is automatic, the notice period, price review or escalation dates, and any milestone the agreement puts a date on.

4. It computes the date you actually need. A notice period is useless until it is a day on a calendar. The bot works the notice date back from the end date, shows the arithmetic, and says which clause set the period — so the thing in your reminder is a date, not a paragraph you have to re-read.

5. It pulls the obligations that are not dates. Reports you owe, certificates of insurance you have to keep current, minimum volumes or spend commitments, service levels you promised, audit and records rights, exclusivity, who has to be told when something changes.

6. Every row quotes the clause. The extracted value, the clause number, the page, and the sentence itself. A row with no quote does not exist — which means you are checking the bot's reading against the contract, not taking its word for it.

7. It says what the contract does not say. No notice period stated. Auto-renewal that is arguable rather than clear. An amendment that conflicts with the original. A handwritten change in the margin. A page that scanned badly. These are reported as gaps, named individually, never filled in with what is usual.

8. A person confirms each row. The reviewer sees the row, the quote and the page side by side, and confirms, edits or rejects it. Nothing becomes a reminder on the bot's say-so, and anything a reviewer edits is recorded as their value rather than the model's.

9. Then it reminds, on your lead times. The confirmed row becomes a reminder to the person who owns it, as far ahead as you asked, in the channel your team actually reads — and it keeps reminding until somebody says what they decided. The record holds the row, the quote, the reviewer and every reminder sent.

What you configure

It can be configured to run in any business. This is what that actually means — the list of things that are yours, not ours.

Your contract types

What you want pulled from a customer agreement, a supplier agreement, a lease, an equipment schedule or an insurance policy. Each type has its own fields, because they are not the same document.

Your lead times

How far ahead you want to know, per obligation type and per value — a lease and a software subscription do not deserve the same warning.

Who owns what

Which role owns a renewal decision, which owns an insurance certificate, which owns a report. Reminders go to a person, not to a shared mailbox nobody owns.

Your escalation

What happens when the first reminder is ignored: who hears about it next, how often, and how close to the deadline it gets loud.

Always-to-a-lawyer clause types

The clause types you never want summarized for you — liability, indemnity, governing law, assignment, anything you have had an argument about before. These are surfaced as present, with the quote, and sent to whoever you use for that.

Your channels

Where a reminder lands and where a confirmation request lands: email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, a calendar invite, or a task in the tracker your team already works out of.

Your file rules

Where contracts are read from, whether we keep a copy at all, how long an extract is kept, and who can open either.

Your systems

Which system holds the tracker — a tool you already have, a sheet you control, or a table we build you — and whether we write to it by API or hand it a file.

The words it uses

How a reminder reads, how a confirmation request reads, and the versioned prompts behind the reading — yours to read, yours to tune.

Transparent, and configurable by you

The dark band below is what the system will not do. This is what you can see and change — and it is how we build everything, not something invented for this page.

You see what it did, and why

Every row carries the clause number, the page and the sentence it was read from, and the notice-date arithmetic is shown rather than asserted. You are checking a reading against the contract, which is a very different thing from trusting a summary.

Versioned prompts you can tune yourself

The prompts behind the reading are yours to read and yours to tune. A change is a reviewable diff, replayed against contracts a person has already confirmed so you can see exactly what it would have extracted differently, and rolled back the same way.

A human in the loop wherever judgment actually matters

Reading, date arithmetic and reminding are automatic. What a clause means, whether to renew, and whether to serve notice are not — and no row becomes a reminder until a person confirms it. That boundary is a property of the system, not a promise about how carefully we'll use it.

Every run logged, along with what it cost

One row per extraction and one per reminder: the quote behind it, the model and prompt version, the reviewer, every reminder sent and what was decided — plus token usage and cost for that run.

It can be configured to run in any business. The contract types and the lead times are yours: your documents, your owners, your escalation, your tracker. The renewals-and-obligations wiring on this page is one configuration of it, not the limit of it.

Works with your tools

This reads the contracts where they already live. We're not asking you to move them into a new platform first.

• Google Drive, SharePoint or Dropbox
• DocuSign or Dropbox Sign
• A contract management tool
• A PSA or professional services tool
• Salesforce or HubSpot
• Google or Outlook calendar
• A project or task tracker
• A spreadsheet you control
• Email, Slack or Microsoft Teams

Works well for

• Managed service providers — Every client agreement renews on its own date, and the notice window is the part nobody is watching.
• Commercial real estate tenants — A lease hides the renewal option, the notice window and the escalation in dense paragraphs.
• Multi-site retailers and franchises — Each location carries its own lease and service agreements, on dates nobody holds centrally.
• Healthcare providers — Payer and vendor agreements carry rate changes and notice periods that have to be met on time.
• Nonprofits — Grant agreements carry reporting dates and spending conditions somebody has to be reminded of.

How a rollout works

Nothing reminds anybody on day one. The first pass is a read over contracts you already know the answers to.

1. 01Discovery

   The quote call, then a working session. We go through your contract types, which fields matter per type, your lead times, who owns what, the clause types that always go to a lawyer, and where the documents live. You get the field design, the gap classes and a written scope.

2. 02Dry run

   The bot reads a sample you have already mapped by hand, including the awkward ones with amendments. Nothing is written anywhere and nobody is reminded. We compare every extracted row and quote against what your team knows is true, and this is where your own numbers come from — on your own paper.

3. 03Assisted mode

   Live. The bot reads new and existing contracts and a person confirms each row with the quote beside it. Reminders start going out once a row is confirmed. The reading stops being reading and becomes checking. The control doesn't change.

4. 04Optional standing extraction

   Optional. Where a contract type is yours, repeats, and has come through clean for a while — your own order form, your own service agreement — those rows can be confirmed by exception, with every hard stop in force and the kill switch. Plenty of teams stop at step 03, and that's a good place to stop.

What we don't claim

• No numbers we haven't earned. No extraction-accuracy figure, no count of renewals saved, no “never miss a deadline again”. We haven't read your contracts. The dry run is where those numbers come from, and they'll be yours.
• No customer claims on this page. No names, no case studies, no logos.
• This is not legal review. It is a reading task with a quote attached to every answer. It does not assess risk, compare a clause to market, redline anything, or replace the person who advises you. If a clause matters, a lawyer should still read it.
• A contract that is silent stays silent. If the agreement never states a notice period, no amount of modeling produces one. The honest output is a gap with the clause that should have covered it, and a question.
• Fully autonomous tracking isn't on offer. The design assumes a person confirms every row before it becomes a reminder. That's deliberate, and it's why the boundary is written down.

Questions people ask

Can AI read our contracts and pull out the key dates?

Yes - and the useful version does three things most tools skip. It works out which document actually governs when there is an original, two amendments and an order form in the same folder. It turns a notice period into a date on a calendar and shows the arithmetic. And it quotes the clause and page behind every row, so a person can check the reading in seconds rather than trusting a summary. What it does not do is tell you what a clause means.

Is this legal review?

No, and the page says so on purpose. It reports what the document says, with the sentence attached. It does not interpret a clause, assess whether a term is enforceable, compare your paper to market, or tell you what to do - and it is not a substitute for advice from whoever handles your legal work. The clause types you never want summarized, like liability or indemnity, are configured to be surfaced as present, with the quote, and sent to that person.

What about amendments that change the dates?

That is the part the design takes seriously. The bot identifies each document as an original, an amendment, an order form under a master agreement or a renewal, works out what supersedes what, and shows its reasoning. Where an amendment conflicts with the original - two different end dates, a notice period that moved - it does not pick a winner. It reports the conflict with both quotes and a person decides.

Will it send the termination or non-renewal notice for us?

No. It holds no e-signature credential and sends nothing to the other party. It never signs, serves, renews or countersigns anything. What it does is make sure the date a notice would have to be given is on somebody's calendar, with the clause that set it, far enough ahead that the decision is still a decision. Acting on it is a person's job, every time.

What if the contract does not state a notice period at all?

Then the row says exactly that. It does not reach for a common term, borrow the period from last year's version of the agreement, or quietly assume the other side's standard paper. A silent contract is reported as a gap, with the clause that should have covered it quoted, which is often the single most useful thing the first pass turns up.

Can it track obligations that are not dates?

Yes, and in practice that is half the value: reports you owe, insurance certificates that have to stay current, minimum volumes or spend commitments, service levels you promised, audit and records rights, exclusivity, and who has to be told when something changes. Each one becomes a row with an owner, a quote and a lead time, so the obligation has a name against it rather than living in the memory of whoever negotiated it.

Where do the reminders go, and what stops them being ignored?

Wherever your team actually looks - email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, a calendar invite, or a task in your tracker - addressed to the person who owns that obligation rather than to a shared mailbox. You configure how far ahead the first one goes, how often it repeats, and who hears about it next if nobody responds. The reminder keeps going until somebody records what they decided, and that decision is part of the record.

Our contracts are confidential. Who can see them?

Only the people you scope them to. Access follows the people who administer contracts, extracts can be stored without keeping a copy of the source document at all, retention is yours to set, and nothing is used to train anything. Where you would rather we never hold the file, the agent can read from your own storage and keep only the extracted rows and the quoted sentences.

Is there a record of where each row came from?

Yes, and that is the point. Every row records the document and version it was read from, the clause number, the page, the quoted sentence, the model and prompt version behind the extraction, the reviewer who confirmed or edited it, every reminder sent and what was decided, with UTC timestamps. If somebody asks why a renewal was allowed to run, the answer is a row and not a memory.