# Before You Sign

> Spot risky contract clauses (renewal, notice, liability, non-compete…) before you sign. Paste, upload or link a contract, terms of service, lease or employment agreement in English or German. Before You Sign flags 19 kinds of clauses — auto-renewal, notice periods, minimum terms, termination fees, liability limits, indemnities, arbitration, non-competes, IP assignment, price escalation, penalties, guarantees, data sharing and unilateral changes — quotes each clause, extracts durations and amounts, and lists questions to ask.

Part of usefulweb.site (https://usefulweb.site/). Results are deterministic calculations from the inputs and the listed assumptions; the API returns exactly what the web page shows.

## Use it
- Human interface: https://beforeyousign.usefulweb.site/ (interactive tool at https://beforeyousign.usefulweb.site/tool)
- JSON API: POST https://beforeyousign.usefulweb.site/api/v1/calculate with a JSON object of inputs (schema: https://beforeyousign.usefulweb.site/api/v1/tool)
- OpenAPI: https://beforeyousign.usefulweb.site/openapi.json
- MCP (Streamable HTTP): https://beforeyousign.usefulweb.site/mcp - tool `before_you_sign`

## Inputs
- text (textarea): Contract text - Paste the text here, or use one of the other options below (exactly one).
- file (file): Or upload a file - TXT, PDF, DOCX, HTML or a photo/scan (PNG/JPG, read with OCR). Max 5 MiB.
- url (url): Or fetch public terms from a URL - A public http(s) address. The page text is fetched once and analysed.

## Method
- The contract is split into sentences (numbered clauses, bullets and § headings start new units).
- Each sentence is tested against 19 clause categories, each with English and German regular-expression patterns (e.g. "automatically renew", "verlängert sich stillschweigend", "Kündigungsfrist", "Vertragsstrafe", "hold harmless").
- Parameters are extracted from the matched sentence: durations (numbers or number words, incl. "three months"/"drei Monate"), percentages, money amounts, radius (km/miles), governing law and court venue.
- Severity comes from a fixed, documented rule per category (e.g. notice period ≥ 3 months = high; non-compete ≥ 12 months or ≥ 50 km = high). It signals how much attention a clause deserves, not whether it is legal or enforceable.
- Each category has fixed questions to ask before signing. Categories without any match are listed as "not detected" — absence of a match is not proof the clause is absent.

## Limits
- Not legal advice. This is an automated, rule-based text analysis that can miss or misread clauses; it never claims completeness. For decisions with legal or financial consequences, ask a qualified professional (e.g. a lawyer, tax adviser or consumer advice centre).