Contracts and legal agreements

A contract is legal text with data inside: parties, dates, amounts, deadlines. In STXT the text remains text, clause by clause, and the data is data, in the same document.

This page is about the source format of a contract: the file from which the PDF, the next version and the data other systems need all come. It does not replace the signed document or the legal process.

A services agreement

Agreement (com.acme.legal.contract):
	Id: AGR-2026-001
	Title: Technical support services agreement
	Status: Signed
	Effective date: 2026-02-01

	Parties:
		Party: ACME Corp
			Role: Provider
			Registration: B-12345678
		Party: Example Ltd
			Role: Client
			Registration: GB-87654321

	Term:
		Start: 2026-02-01
		End: 2027-01-31

	Payment:
		Fee: 12000
		Currency: EUR
		Billing period: Monthly

	Clauses:
		Clause: Subject matter
			Number: 1
			Text >>
				The Provider shall render to the Client the technical support
				services described in Annex I, within the hours and at the service
				levels established therein.
		Clause: Limitation of liability
			Number: 2
			Text >>
				The total liability of each party shall not exceed the annual amount
				of the contract.

				This limitation shall not apply in case of wilful misconduct or gross
				negligence.
			Internal notes >>
				Standard clause LEG-07, approved by the legal department on
				2025-11-03. Do not modify without legal review.

In this example we have:

Data: the parties, the dates and the payment. It is what a billing system or an expiry alert needs.
Clauses: each one is a node with its title as the value, its number and its text.
Text: the legal wording of each clause, as is, in a block node that accepts several paragraphs.
Internal notes: they go inside the clause they refer to, and whoever generates the PDF omits them.

For example, a program can get these values without reading the contract:

Node	Value
`Term/End`	`2027-01-31`
`Payment/Fee`	`12000`
`Payment/Currency`	`EUR`

The template

Template (@stxt.template): com.acme.legal.contract
	Structure >>
		Agreement:
			Id: (1)
			Title: (1)
			Status: (1) ENUM [Draft, Signed, Terminated]
			Effective date: (?) DATE
			Parties: (1)
				Party: (2+)
					Role: (1)
					Registration: (?)
			Term: (?)
				Start: (1) DATE
				End: (?) DATE
			Payment: (?)
				Fee: (1) NUMBER
				Currency: (1) ENUM [EUR, USD, GBP]
				Billing period: (?) ENUM [Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly]
			Clauses: (?)
				Clause: (*)
					Number: (?) NATURAL
					Text: (1) TEXT
					Internal notes: (?) TEXT

The template checks the data and does not restrict the wording of the clauses, their number or their order.

An agreement that does not validate

# ERROR: this document does not validate
Agreement (com.acme.legal.contract):
	Id: AGR-2026-002
	Title: Non-disclosure agreement
	Status: Draft
	# An agreement has at least two parties: (2+)
	Parties:
		Party: ACME Corp
			Role: Provider
	Payment:
		# A NUMBER has no thousands separator or symbol
		Fee: 12,000 €
		# `Euros` is not a value of the list
		Currency: Euros
	Clauses:
		# A clause without `Text` is not a clause
		Clause: Confidentiality
			Number: 1

A service level agreement

An SLA is the case with the most data inside legal text: targets, times and penalties.

SLA (com.acme.legal.sla):
	Service: Payments platform
	Agreement: AGR-2026-001
	Effective date: 2026-03-01

	Availability:
		Target percentage: 99.9
		Measurement period: Monthly

	Response times:
		Severity: Critical
			Max response minutes: 30
		Severity: High
			Max response minutes: 120
		Severity: Normal
			Max response minutes: 480

	Penalties:
		Penalty: Availability breach
			Condition >>
				Monthly availability below the target.
			Consequence >>
				10 % discount on the invoice of the affected month.

	Legal text >>
		Metrics shall be measured according to the procedures described in the
		technical annex. The parties shall review the targets yearly.

And its template:

Template (@stxt.template): com.acme.legal.sla
	Structure >>
		SLA:
			Service: (1)
			Agreement: (?)
			Effective date: (1) DATE
			Availability: (1)
				Target percentage: (1) NUMBER
				Measurement period: (1) ENUM [Monthly, Quarterly]
			Response times: (?)
				Severity: (*)
					Max response minutes: (1) NATURAL
			Penalties: (?)
				Penalty: (*)
					Condition: (1) TEXT
					Consequence: (1) TEXT
			Legal text: (?) TEXT

Agreement: AGR-2026-001 links the SLA to its contract. The dashboard that measures the service can read the availability target and the response times from the same file the parties signed.

How it is used

Versions: each contract is a file in a repository, and each revision is a diff that shows which clause changed or which date moved.
Standard clauses: a program compares each clause with the version approved by the legal department, and flags those that differ.
Validation: stxt validate --recursive contracts/ (The command line) in continuous integration.
Extraction: the quarter's expiries or the amounts per client come out of the tree.
Publishing: the PDF is generated from the file, without the internal notes.

Limits

STXT does not provide legal validity, electronic signature or custody.

It does not interpret the text of the clauses either: "except in case of wilful misconduct" is text, and only a person can evaluate it.

The template does not check consistency between fields (that End is later than Start, or that the contract the SLA cites exists). That is done by the program that walks the repository.

See also Corporate documents and the comparison STXT vs XML.