Steal My Prompt Vol. 50: The Contract Inspector

A contract lands in your inbox. A vendor agreement, an offer letter, consulting terms, a lease. You read it once, the way you read anything long, catch the dollar figure and the dates, and sign, because the other side seems to know what they are doing and you have a meeting in ten minutes.

More often than not, the clause you caught is fine. The two you skimmed are the problem, and so is the third one that was never in the document at all. Contracts are written by the side that benefits from them, and a protection you would have wanted does not announce its own absence.

Before it does anything else, this prompt asks you one question, which outcome in this deal you cannot afford. Then it reads the contract as the other side's lawyer and finds the clauses that protect them at your expense. Next comes the absence check, where it lists the protections that should exist for your side and marks each one present, weak, or missing. Every finding gets ranked against your answer, every flag has to quote the contract word for word, and the output ends with the three questions to send back.

Back in Vol 31, the 10-Minute Win built a word-for-word script for the negotiation you start. This one is for the paper that arrives already written.

What You Can Use This For

• A vendor agreement for a system your team will live inside for three years, where the auto-renewal notice window is shorter than your budget cycle
• An employment offer where the non-compete, the IP assignment, and the bonus clawback sit three pages behind the salary
• A consulting or freelance agreement where payment is net 60 and nothing says what happens on day 61
• A healthcare services or software agreement where the data-return and business associate terms decide what happens to patient information when the relationship ends
• A commercial or residential lease where the renewal terms and the early exit are the entire deal

How to Use It

1. Open Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or Gemini. The prompt works on the free tier of all four.
2. For anything you would regret signing, turn on the reasoning option first: Think Deeper in Copilot, Extended thinking in Claude, the reasoning model in ChatGPT, or Deep Think in Gemini. It catches more on the first read and this is a first-read job.
3. Copy the prompt below and fill in the three bracketed fields. Paste the full contract, or upload the file if the paste is too long. Short on time? The seven sections named in the prompt carry most of the risk.
4. Answer the one question honestly, because the ranking is only as good as your answer. Being locked in for three years and losing ownership of your work produce two different tables.
5. Send the questions and keep the table. They are written in your voice, neutral, and one sentence each, which is what makes them easy to say yes to.

Pro tip: before you send anything, paste the output and the contract into a fresh chat and ask the model to mark each quoted line FOUND or NOT FOUND. The quote rule is your guard against an invented clause, and the second read takes two minutes.

The Prompt

Copy/Paste Prompt:

I am about to sign a contract and I want you to inspect it the way the other side's lawyer would, then tell me what to send back before I sign.

Contract type: [VENDOR MSA, EMPLOYMENT OFFER, CONSULTING AGREEMENT, LEASE, OR OTHER] My side: [WHICH PARTY I AM, FOR EXAMPLE THE CUSTOMER, THE EMPLOYEE, OR THE CONSULTANT] Contract text: [PASTE THE FULL CONTRACT, OR THE SECTIONS ON TERM, TERMINATION, PAYMENT, LIABILITY, INDEMNIFICATION, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, AND CONFIDENTIALITY]

Before you inspect anything, ask me exactly one question and wait for my answer: what is the one outcome in this deal I cannot afford? Do not ask anything else. Do not produce any part of the inspection until I have answered. If I type skip, assume the outcome I cannot afford is being unable to exit this agreement on reasonable terms, and label that assumption at the top of your output.

Then do three passes.

Pass 1, read it as their lawyer. Take the role of the lawyer for the other party, the side this draft protects. Identify up to five clauses you would fight hardest to keep exactly as written, because they protect your client at my expense. For each one, quote the operative language word for word, with its section number or the first words of the paragraph if the sections are not numbered. Do not paraphrase. If you cannot find the words in the text I gave you, do not flag it.

Pass 2, the absence check. For a [CONTRACT TYPE] where I am [MY SIDE], list the protections that would normally exist for my side. Examples: a right to terminate for convenience, a cap on my liability, a cure period before I am in default, ownership of my pre-existing work, a limit on automatic renewal, payment timing with a late-payment remedy. Use only the ones that fit this contract type and my side. Mark each one PRESENT with the quoted section, WEAK with the quoted section and what weakens it, or MISSING. A missing clause cannot be quoted, and that is the point. The most expensive line in a contract is often the one that is not there.

Pass 3, rank against my answer. Take every Pass 1 clause and every Pass 2 item marked WEAK or MISSING, and order them by how directly each one touches the outcome I said I cannot afford. Not by section order. Not by how legally interesting it is.

Output three things.

1. A four-column table: CLAUSE OR GAP | WHAT IT DOES TO ME IN PLAIN ENGLISH | QUOTED LANGUAGE OR MISSING | PRIORITY, ranked against my answer. Under the table, one line listing the protections you marked PRESENT, so I know what is already covered.

2. For the top three rows, the exact question I should send back to the other side. One sentence each, in my voice, neutral in tone, asking them to add, change, or explain the language. Questions, not demands.

3. One line naming the single clause or gap where, if they will not move, I should walk away, and how it connects to the outcome I cannot afford.

Two rules. If a clause is standard and reasonable for my side, say so rather than inflating it into a risk. Do not tell me whether anything is enforceable or what the law says in any jurisdiction, and state that limit once at the end.

Transparency and Notes

• Built in Claude. Model-agnostic, and the free tiers of Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot all run it.
• An offer letter carries your salary and real names, and a vendor agreement may sit under NDA. Remove names and anything confidential before pasting, never paste patient information, and check your employer's policy before using a company AI tool on contract text.
• The pattern here is the Absence Check. Inspect a document for what should be in it and is not, and require a quote for anything that is. It works just as well on a job description, a project plan, or an insurance policy.
• This is education, not legal advice, and the prompt refuses enforceability questions by design. For anything with real money or your career attached, take the ranked table and the three questions to a lawyer. Twenty minutes with a prepared list beats an hour without one.