I'm building an AI agent to help negotiate the contract.

Dear Negotiation Explorer,

You have negotiated the price, the delivery dates and the other commercial terms. Now the contract arrives, and you have to negotiate that too.

You know what you agreed to, but you do not have the legal expertise to judge everything in front of you. Your internal lawyer is busy and cannot get back to you. The other side is waiting for an answer.

You need to understand what the clauses mean for your business, what to challenge and what wording you could propose instead.

That is the help I want Macneil, the contracts agent we are building for the NegoAI platform, to give buyers and sellers.

We are in week nine of building the platform in the open. The agents that prepare a negotiation now run on our own server. This week we worked on what Macneil will need to know.

Brama, my partner in Claude Code, built the knowledge base. Codex reviewed the work as it was being written. We discussed what I want Macneil to do, and I made the decisions about that.

The knowledge base is complete. We are drafting the document that defines what Macneil must do with it. The agent itself is still being built.

You bring Macneil the other side's contract. I want it to tell you where to start, explain what those terms mean for your business, and give you wording you can propose instead.

If it uses a word you do not know, it should explain it there. If you need your lawyer to translate the report before you can read it, we have made the wrong report.

If the other side refuses your proposed change, Macneil should help you work out what you could accept instead and what to ask for in return. You decide what you can agree to.

The same clause looks different when you are buying and when you are selling. The buyer may want more protection; the seller needs to understand how much responsibility they are accepting.

You sign the contract, but the work carries on. A delivery is missed, or the customer asks for work you never agreed to do. Later, the contract comes up for renewal and you want different terms. I want Macneil to help with those conversations too, from what the contract says and what has actually happened.

We are building Macneil to advise sales and purchasing as they negotiate contract terms, even when legal is not available. You decide whether to follow the advice and when to involve legal.

The knowledge base holds the material Macneil will read when it works on your contract. It covers what you agree to deliver and pay for, what happens when things go wrong, and how the agreement ends.

It also explains how the clauses affect each other. You can read one clause and miss something in an attachment that changes it, so Macneil will need to read the documents together.

We have sections on the law in different countries, because this has to help people negotiating across borders too. They cover the EU and its member states, England and Wales, the United States, Singapore and mainland China. We have more detail on some than others. Where the research could not confirm something, the file says so.

Codex caught a problem in the summaries. The full explanation said when a rule applied. The summary left some of those conditions out, so it sounded as though the rule applied more widely. You could read the summary on its own and never notice.

We corrected those passages. Codex took over the last corrections too, so it checked its own work on those. The knowledge base is complete, but we have not independently confirmed every statement. Where something is still uncertain, we say so beside it.

We are now drafting the PRD, the product requirements document. In it, we write down what Macneil must do when you ask for help and what you should get back.

For a whole contract, I want the changes that need your attention first. Then you can read through the clauses in detail. If you have left out a document, Macneil should tell you what it can answer without it and what it needs to see before it can go further.

We still have to make Macneil do it.

After the PRD, we write the system instructions, or SI. These tell Macneil how to work with what it knows. They say when to ask you a question and how to give advice when part of the answer is still uncertain.

Then we give it work from buyers and sellers and check whether it does what we asked.

Pick a clause you want to change. Write down why you need it changed, in terms of your own business. Then write what you could accept if they say no, and what you would want in return.

Keep the original clause beside your notes. Make sure you have kept the conditions that change what it means.

On Thursday, September 24, at 18:30 Rome time (12:30 New York), I am teaching Use AI to create value in negotiation, even with no trust.

We will look at how to prepare when the other side will not tell you what they want, and how to use AI to develop options you can put to them. The session is free and lasts 45 minutes.

Register for the September 24 lesson.

You can also see the full series.

Which part of negotiating a contract would you most want help with?

Just hit reply and tell me. I read and answer every one.

#Negotiation #NegotiationSkills #NegoAI #AI #AIAgents #AugmentedNegotiator