I built a contract risk scanner after watching agency owners sign contracts they didn't fully understand — here's what I learned in 30 days

Six months ago I was building AI products for clients.

Every project started the same way — a contract. Sometimes the client sent it, sometimes I did. Either way, both sides would skim it, maybe flag one or two things, and sign.

Nobody wanted to slow down a deal by sending it to a lawyer. Lawyers cost $300–500/hr. The contract was for $5,000. The math didn't feel worth it.

Then I watched a founder I respect get locked into an auto-renewal clause he missed. 12 months, automatic, 90-day cancellation window. He missed the window by 3 weeks. Stuck for another year at a price that no longer made sense for his business.

The clause was 2 sentences buried in section 8.4.

That's when I started paying attention to how many agency owners were getting burned by contracts they technically read but didn't fully understand. Not because they were careless — but because reading a contract and knowing what to look for are completely different skills.

So I built PreSign.

It's an AI contract risk scanner built specifically for agency owners and freelancers — not lawyers.

You upload a PDF or DOCX, tell it whether you received the contract or you're sending it, and it flags the hidden risks in plain English. Auto-renewals, IP traps, uncapped liability, bad payment terms, non-solicitation clauses — scored by severity, with a suggested action for each one.

It also generates a one-page lawyer brief automatically. So if you do need a lawyer, you walk in knowing exactly which 3 clauses to focus on. That turns a 2-hour bill into a 20-minute conversation.

What I learned building and launching it:

The biggest surprise was the "sending" direction. I built the tool thinking mostly about people receiving contracts — but the moment I added "I'm sending this" mode, agency owners immediately wanted to check their own contract templates. Turns out most people have been sending the same contract template for years without ever having it reviewed. That template often has weak protection they don't know about.

The second thing I learned: people don't Google "contract risk scanner." They Google "what does this clause mean" or post in forums asking "is this normal?" The discovery problem is real. The pain is real. The connection between pain and solution is what I'm still figuring out.

Where I am now:

Product is live at presign-indol.vercel.app. Free plan includes 2 analyses a month. No credit card required.

I'm looking for agency owners and freelancers who sign B2B contracts regularly and are willing to run a real contract through it and tell me honestly what they thought — what it caught, what it missed, what was confusing.

Not looking for cheerleaders. Looking for people who will tell me it's wrong when it's wrong.

If that's you — try it and reply here. I'll read every response.

And if you've ever been burned by a contract clause you missed — I'd genuinely love to hear that story. It's the kind of thing that shaped this whole product.