open-agreements/open-agreements

OpenAgreements helps people and software agents find primary-source-backed U.S.
legal guidance and produce reviewable DOCX files from standard agreement
templates.
What OpenAgreements does
- Publishes jurisdiction-specific practice guides with citations to primary law.
- Provides standard agreement templates with source and license metadata.
- Fills templates locally through a CLI or over MCP.
- Publishes review checklists and comparison surveys in human- and
machine-readable formats.
OpenAgreements provides legal information and document mechanics, not legal
advice. It does not decide whether a form or clause is right for a transaction,
and generated documents are drafts for human review.
The project’s longer-term goal is a citable conformance layer for legal AI:
primary law becomes inspectable requirements, an AI can check a document against
them, and a lawyer owns the final call. Read Why OpenAgreements Exists
for the rationale; this README stays focused on using the project.
Fill your first agreement
Install the CLI locally, inspect the available forms, and fill the Common Paper
Mutual NDA:
The last command writes mutual-nda.docx. Open it in Word or another DOCX
viewer and review every filled term before signature. Defaults supply the
standard one-year term, Delaware governing law, and other omitted cover terms;
the CLI reports any priority fields that still need attention.
For a complete, copyable example and field-review steps, follow the
quick start.
Understand the workflow
The standard form is authoritative until rendering. Your supplied values become
the transaction-specific inputs. The generated DOCX is an output for review; it
is never automatically accepted or signed.
The legal-content path is separate: practice guides cite primary sources,
surveys compare jurisdictions, and checklists turn requirements into review
steps. Those materials can inform a decision, but they do not mutate an
agreement.
Choose your next step
- Install OpenAgreements — choose local CLI, local MCP, or hosted MCP.
- Fill a standard agreement — complete the canonical workflow end to end.
- Use legal guidance and checklists — find the right human- or machine-readable source.
- Connect an AI agent — configure Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, or Gemini CLI.
- Browse the full catalog — templates, guides, surveys, checklists, skills, and packages.
- Understand system boundaries — follow content and documents through the system.
- Contribute — change code, documentation, templates, or field-selectors.