Beautiful contracts from the CLI — NDA, consulting, MSA, SOW, service. Plain English, 1–3 pages, agent-friendly.

A stateful, single-binary CLI for drafting and rendering business contracts. Built for humans who want a clean terminal workflow and for AI agents that need a deterministic JSON interface to draft and dispatch contracts on their owner's behalf.

Sibling of invoice-cli — same SQLite store, same issuers, same clients. Drop a contract draft for a client you already invoice, in one binary.

• Five contract kinds, plain English. Consulting, NDA (mutual or unilateral), MSA, SOW, service agreement. Embedded clause packs use real-contract conventions: kind as title, project as subtitle, "Dated" line, numbered (1)/(2) parties prose, "AGREED TERMS" section.
• Composable clause packs. Each kind ships with a standard pack. Include or exclude clauses at creation time (--include non_solicit --exclude warranties), or override the body of any clause from a Markdown file (contract clauses edit <num> termination --from-file ./my-version.md). Reset to pack default with contract clauses reset <num>. Add custom clauses entirely (contract clauses add <num> custom_audit --body "...").
• Three Typst templates. helvetica-nera (Swiss monochrome, default), vienna-legal (Bauhaus / terracotta), editorial (centred serif — reads like a deed). Each template owns the masthead aesthetic; shared/contract.typ owns the structure (parties prose, key terms, numbered clauses, signature block).
• Shared with invoice-cli. Issuers + clients live in one accounting SQLite at ~/Library/Application Support/com.paperfoot.accounting/. Anything you invoice clients add ... is immediately usable by contract new ... --client ..., and vice versa. contract doctor surfaces the shared list and warns when a client lacks the legal fields needed for a contract party block.
• Signature lifecycle. draft → sent → signed → active / expired / terminated. Drafts render with a faint DRAFT watermark; --final produces a clean signing copy. contract sign <num> --side us|them --name "..." --title "..." records each signature; status auto-promotes to signed when both sides have signed. Sent/signed contracts are immutable — clauses and metadata lock.
• Signature block never splits. If the execution block doesn't fit on the current page, Typst pushes the whole block to the next page — never half on one page, half on another.
• Agent-friendly. Every command emits a {version, status, data | error} envelope when piped or --json. contract agent-info returns a full capability + exit-code manifest with a shared_state block telling the agent which entities are shared with invoice-cli and to list existing before creating duplicates. contract skill install drops a ready-to-use skill into ~/.claude/skills/contract-cli/, ~/.codex/skills/contract-cli/, ~/.gemini/skills/contract-cli/.

brew tap paperfoot/tap
brew install contract

cargo install contract-cli

git clone https://github.com/paperfoot/contract-cli
cd contract-cli
cargo install --path .

All install paths produce a single contract binary. Typst is the only runtime dependency (brew install typst on macOS).

# Reuse the issuers and clients you already have in invoice-cli, or add new
contract issuer list # shared with invoice-cli
contract clients list
# Add legal fields to an existing client (V7 added these, invoice-cli
# doesn't need them but contracts do)
contract clients edit reshape-clinic \
 --legal-name "Reshape Clinic Ltd" \
 --company-no "12345678" \
 --jurisdiction "England and Wales"
# Quick mutual NDA — 3-year term
contract new --kind nda --as boris --client reshape-clinic \
 --purpose "exploring a joint product line" --term-years 3
# Consulting agreement, fixed fee, plain-English clause pack
contract new --kind consulting --as boris --client alberto-pertusa \
 --title "Superlearning Ltd — Company Formation Engagement" \
 --purpose "guide and execute the registration of Superlearning Ltd at Companies House and stand up the company's initial governance, share, and tax setup" \
 --fee fixed:1500:GBP --fee-schedule on-completion \
 --term-months 2 \
 --deliverable "Form IN01 filing at Companies House" \
 --deliverable "Bespoke Articles of Association" \
 --deliverable "Initial share structure + statutory registers" \
 --deliverable "HMRC Corporation Tax registration" \
 --ip-assignment client \
 --governing-law "England and Wales"
# Render — DRAFT watermark by default; --final removes it
contract render CTR-boris-2026-0001 --template editorial --final --open
# Record signatures — status auto-bumps to "signed" when both sides done
contract sign CTR-boris-2026-0001 --side us --name "B. Djordjevic" --title "Director"
contract sign CTR-boris-2026-0001 --side them --name "A. Pertusa"

Run contract --help for the full reference.

At render time the chain is:

--template flag > contract.default_template > "helvetica-nera"

Each contract is built from a clause pack. By default it includes the pack's default_clauses in order. Customise per contract:

contract pack show consulting
contract contracts clauses list CTR-boris-2026-0001
contract contracts clauses add CTR-boris-2026-0001 non_solicit --from-file ./extra.md --position 8
contract contracts clauses edit CTR-boris-2026-0001 termination --from-file ./our-termination.md
contract contracts clauses remove CTR-boris-2026-0001 warranties
contract contracts clauses move CTR-boris-2026-0001 governing_law 12
contract contracts clauses reset CTR-boris-2026-0001 # back to pack default

A clause's body uses simple Markdown — paragraphs, dash bullets, and 1. numbered lists. Pack clauses use {{vars}} like {{our_legal_name}}, {{their_legal_name}}, {{effective_date}}, {{term_text}}, {{governing_law}}, {{jurisdiction_phrase}}, {{fee_text}}, {{deliverables_block}}, {{ip_assignment_text}}, {{confidentiality_years}}, {{termination_notice_days}}, {{purpose}}.

• Config: shared Paperfoot accounting config (~/Library/Application Support/com.paperfoot.accounting/config.toml on macOS).
• Database: shared SQLite at accounting.db in the same dir.
• Templates: extracted on first use to the shared assets dir; refreshed on upgrade.

Nothing ever leaves your machine. No telemetry. No phone-home.

• Rust binary via cargo / single-binary distribution.
• SQLite via rusqlite + refinery migrations (finance-core/migrations/V7__contracts.sql).
• Typst for PDF rendering — templates embedded via rust-embed, JSON sidecar pattern (Rust builds ContractRenderData, writes it next to the templates in a temp dir, typst compile loads the JSON).
• Clause packs as TOML, embedded via rust-embed. Five kinds ×ばつ one standard pack at launch.
• Built on finance-core and follows the agent-cli-framework conventions for agent ergonomics.

This is a contract drafting tool, not legal advice. In scope:

• Clean, plain-English contract generation across common business kinds
• Composable clauses (include / exclude / override / custom)
• Lifecycle tracking (draft → sent → signed → active → expired / terminated) with signature records
• Multiple Typst templates with three distinct voices
• Shared accounting state with invoice-cli (issuers, clients)

Explicitly out of scope:

• Negotiation workflow / redlines / version diffing
• E-signature platforms (DocuSign, Dropbox Sign) — out for v1
• M&A documents, court filings, regulatory submissions
• Legal advice — these are practical starting points; have a lawyer review for material engagements

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