Whether it’s a lease, a job offer, a contractor agreement, or even a subscription, this AI contract prompt draws your attention to at least 3 things you should be looking at. What the contract actually costs you (or pays you), what the other side can change without asking you, and 5 clarifying questions to ask so you understand what you’re signing.
All you do is paste the prompt, tell it which side you’re on (tenant or landlord, employee or employer, client or contractor), then paste the whole agreement under it. A PDF, plain text, a photo of the pages, or something in between. Plain text works best, because nothing has to be read off an image first.
Why asking a model to “review this contract” doesn’t work
When you ask a model to review a contract, it will summarize it. It boils the agreement down to fewer words.
What you want is to surface the important parts buried in the contract.
Stuff like:
- Ambiguous fees
- Exhibits that are referenced but never attached
Those are the parts you need help finding, and a summary won’t hand them to you, because you don’t know to ask for them.
This AI contract prompt looks for those instead.
It reads the document in order, because the fees and the clauses that subtly hand the other side more power are hiding in plain sight in the middle pages. The prompt tallies up what the contract will cost or what it will pay. And it cites every data point it finds, it has to tell you where it came from.
If it can’t cite it, then it won’t show it. That one rule is doing real work here, and it’s the same habit behind writing AI prompts that hold up.
That way you can go to the contract, find it, and read the whole clause yourself. You make sure that the number is right, fast. And that’s what this prompt is about. Speeding things up by helping with another pair of eyes, not doing the whole task.
Another common mistake is giving it a live url and telling the AI model to read the terms itself. I don’t know why that doesn’t work, but I did it twice on the same page and got 2 different answers on whether a refund clause existed. Copy the text and paste it in.
What you need before you run the contract review prompt
Take a picture of every page, including the boilerplate ones, and check that the small print is readable in the picture before you send it. If you have it as a file or an email instead, paste the text.
If the agreement points to another document you were handed (an exhibit, a fee schedule, a set of community rules), add that too. If you weren’t handed it, leave it out. What will happen is the prompt will turn it into one of your questions instead.
Before you start, I should mention that, depending on the contract length, you must use one of the better models and turn on reasoning.
Google Gemini choked on the 8-page lease agreement and got the numbers wrong. But when I used the Pro model and used reasoning, it got it right. Claude Opus got it right on Low effort, but it’s token hungry.
The prompt
Read the agreement below as MY ROLE. Tell me what it costs, what they decide alone, what I give up, what it never says, and the 5 questions to send before I sign. Work only from the document.
RULES
1. Cite section, clause or page for every finding. No cite, no finding.
2. Quote consecutive words exactly, one sentence at most, punctuation and apostrophes exactly as printed, curly ones included. Never stitch two parts, trim with an ellipsis, or write a quote from memory. Before printing, check every quote against the text, including those inside questions, and delete any you cannot find character for character.
3. Never say whether a price is fair or a clause legal, enforceable or standard.
4. Read every clause in order. Fees and powers sit in the middle.
5. An amount left open is UNKNOWN. Never estimate. Arithmetic on stated numbers is not an estimate: do it and show your figures.
6. Each finding gets one home, the section where it does the most damage. Only the questions may repeat it.
7. Where a section is capped, print what carries money or a consequence first, then "There are N more." N is a number, never "more than" or "several".
8. If MY ROLE is blank, name the side you assumed in one line, then continue as it.
OUTPUT
TOP LINE. Five lines at the very top of your reply, composed last. Nothing not below with a cite.
1: the single most one-sided thing, in plain words. Unless more than half of the deal terms are unfilled, in which case say so with the count and do not build the report out of UNKNOWN. A deal term is a price, date, party name, selection or duty, never a signature, initial or "if applicable" line.
2: the 12-month total and how many priced lines are UNKNOWN.
3: the deadline that costs most to miss, and what it costs.
4: how many things they decide alone, and whether any has no cap or notice.
5: the first question.
WHAT THIS IS. One line: kind, parties, how long, how it ends.
WHAT IT COSTS OVER 12 MONTHS. Table: item, amount, how often, 12-month total, section. Recurring multiplied out, one-time at full value. A charge that lands only if I break a rule or exceed a limit is CONDITIONAL: name the trigger, keep it out of the total. An extra I choose goes in, marked optional. One total, everything in it, never a second smaller one, never zero. Money flowing to me gets its own line, never netted. A figure the document itself calls an estimate or a projection is not a charge. Leave it out of the table. Close with the total and the count of what cannot be priced.
MONEY THAT COMES BACK. Each deposit or holdback, section, what it says about getting it back. None: one line.
MONEY THAT DOES NOT COME BACK. Every charge never returned, whatever it is called, including a fee sitting where a deposit would. Quote the words that make it non-refundable.
CHARGES IT NEVER DEFINES. A charge is defined only if the document says what the money buys; a name is not a definition, and the words must sit in a clause that imposes payment. Quote and section, any size. No questions here.
DOCUMENTS IT REFERS TO AND DOES NOT INCLUDE. Sort each. MONEY OR OBLIGATION: it can set a charge, impose a duty, or the agreement makes it part of itself; one that can set charges also gets an UNKNOWN row in the cost table. INFORMATION ONLY: pamphlet, guide, summary, notice, names on one line and nothing else. One the document records as already given to me is not missing. Never guess contents. Then each schedule or exhibit I must fill in myself, never a field, and the quote on what leaving it empty means. Close: how many of the first kind, and that signing means agreeing to them.
WHAT IT LETS THE OTHER SIDE DO. Anything they change, end, renew, suspend, revoke, reassign, price or decide alone. Quote and section. Say in the same line where no cap, notice or limit is stated. Numbered. Cap 5.
WHAT I CANNOT DO. Bans, things needing permission, limits outside the agreement, anything surviving termination, and every deadline that runs against me. Quote, section, and the consequence or NO PENALTY STATED. Numbered. Cap 5.
WHAT I GIVE UP. Four by name: dispute handling, a licence I grant over what I make, something I thought I owned that is licensed to me, anything I agree not to do afterwards. Quote and section each one present. An opt-out window gets the number of days. One closing line naming the absent ones, never a line each.
WHAT IT NEVER SAYS. "This does not say what happens when X." Never a claim about the law. Each unfilled deal term goes here once and nowhere else, at most 2 of the 5. Cap 5.
QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE SIGNING. Exactly five. Build every candidate, rank, keep the top five. A candidate qualifies only if a bad answer changes a number, a date, or whether I sign. Ask for a fact or a document, never for a term to be changed, waived or added, and never in words that say I expect to break a rule, pay late or leave early. No invented scenarios, nothing the document already states, nothing sorted INFORMATION ONLY or already given to me. Rank by how much changes if the answer is bad, then by how many findings above one answer settles. Pasteable into an email. Quotation marks only for words that are word for word. Close: "There are N more the document supports."
TYPE: [lease / employment / HOA / client contract / terms of service / subscription / other]
MY ROLE: [tenant / landlord / guarantor / employee / employer / client / vendor / member / leave blank]
DOCUMENT:
[PASTE HERE]The follow-up prompt that checks the AI’s own work
Once it gives you the report, paste this underneath it in the same chat. It’s the same move as the LLM self-critique prompt, pointed at a contract.
Check your own answer before I read it. Confirm every section number you cited holds the words you quoted. Add the 12-month column again and confirm the total. Confirm every charge I must pay that the document does not price has an UNKNOWN row. Reprint only what changed.Why this contract review prompt works
Every finding cites the section it came from
That way you can go to the contract, find it, and read the whole clause yourself. Check that the number is right.
One model told me the lease had a Condominium fee and sent me to Section 37. There is no Condominium fee, and Section 37 isn’t what it said it was either.
A number the contract never states comes back as UNKNOWN
It doesn’t guess. A price that turns into “the then-current rate” isn’t a number, it’s a blank. The total only means something if you know how many blanks are sitting behind it, so look at that count.
One model told me there were none, in the same output where it listed a document that sets fees.
A fee you only pay if you pay late stays out of the total
A late fee isn’t a cost until you’re late. Mix those in and you end up arguing over a number that was never yours to pay.
An estimate is not a number you can plan on
If the contract calls a figure an estimate, it stays out of the total, because nobody committed to it. That does not make it free. It is a bill coming with no number attached, so treat it like any other blank.
One model quoted the line calling a heating figure an estimate, then added the $114 to my total anyway, which makes a total look exact when it is not.
Every date that costs you money if you miss it gets its own line
The notice period. The window to cancel. Anything that expires. You can deal with a fee later. A date is different. Once it passes, whatever it was protecting is gone, whether that’s your right to cancel, your deposit, or your chance to walk away.
3 of those 5 rules exist because a model broke them: the invented condominium fee, the wrong UNKNOWN count, and the phantom estimate.
All 3 came from the same common problem: a model answering fast with reasoning turned off. Run this one on a reasoning model. Then send the 5 questions it wrote for you, and once the answers come back, use this money decision prompt to help you decide what to do next.