My co-founder Jake wrote this in 2021 and sold me on starting Common Paper:
“Like the APIs that sit between software applications, contracts are interfaces between companies… If we build software that treats contracts as APIs, we can unlock the scalability, clarity, and efficiency that APIs have brought to the world of software.”
With the help of smart, expert attorneys, Common Paper released world class standard templates for NDAs, Cloud Service Agreements, Design Partner Agreements, BAAs, DPAs, Professional Services and more. Hundreds of millions of dollars in deals have been closed on those standards, but we had a long way to go to fulfill the vision that contracts can be APIs. People loved the standards and many companies adopted them.
We released a REST API in 2023 to put the data within your reach. Your contract was now a curl request away from landing in a CRM, data warehouse, spreadsheet, etc. Few people adopted it. Common Paper grew, but on the promise of closing deals faster rather than the APIs.
Enter 2025, and artificial intelligence is helping our customers do more. Our API is getting hammered. We’ve written and re-written our MCP server. No one cared about our API for 2 years, and all of a sudden everyone is using it to make better decisions for the next deal.
But even if you loved Common Paper, there was one thing that eventually came up: The standards didn’t cover everything.
Sure, you could upload a PDF or docx file and get it signed, but then we’re giving you the same “picture of a signature on top of a picture of a contract” that you could get from every other esignature tool. It works, and you did it (and WE did it) but if you love Common Paper you know what you’re missing. If you needed an employment agreement, a one way NDA, a SAFE, or any of hundreds of other agreement types you missed out on 90% of what Common Paper is great at and just sent a doc for signature.
That era is over. You can now turn any contract into an API with customizable inputs and terms defined by you.
We can now ingest your custom terms, let you fork them, even update them via markdown or a file upload. You have MCP and API access for everything.
You can define a custom cover sheet in YAML with all the input fields you need, and none that you don’t. Don’t like the name “Key Terms”? Change it. Every character is under your control. Every change is recorded and can be reverted via our web app, MCP, API, etc. Chat with your agent on how to build the perfect cover sheet or copy and paste a template from our help docs. All of that is possible, but once defined the terms and cover page are deterministic and hallucination free.
When you send and sign an agreement based on this custom template, you can access the contract values from what is now your company’s legal data model.