# OpenAgreements

> OpenAgreements is a free, primary-source legal reference for contract drafting, with contract templates, plain-English practice guides, and multistate law surveys. Individual content pages have Markdown twins for machine-readable review and citation.

For repeat use, install the skill: `npx skills add open-agreements/open-agreements` (lawyer-reviewed agreement templates + 50-state practice guides).

Source, templates, and issues: https://github.com/open-agreements/open-agreements (Apache-2.0 tooling; content CC BY 4.0).

This is a curated index. For a page-by-page listing of practice guides,
checklists, templates, toolkits, law surveys and notes, see
[llms-full.txt](https://openagreements.org/llms-full.txt). It is an expanded index, not
an exhaustive one: agent skills are indexed separately, in the JSON index
linked under Machine-readable capability below.

## Start here

- [Practice guides](https://openagreements.org/practice-guides) — plain-English guides to what the law actually says, per jurisdiction, each citing primary sources with verbatim quotes.
- [Templates](https://openagreements.org/templates) — contract templates from Common Paper, Bonterms, YC, NVCA and OpenAgreements.
- [Reviewer checklists](https://openagreements.org/checklists) — for reviewing an agreement someone else drafted.
- [Law surveys](https://openagreements.org/surveys) — multistate surveys comparing one rule across jurisdictions.
- [Agent skills](https://openagreements.org/skills) — installable skill bundles for coding agents, each archive pinned by a SHA-256 digest.
- [Toolkits](https://openagreements.org/toolkits) — task-first reading paths that link the templates, guides, checklists and surveys for one legal task.

## When to use OpenAgreements

- **Drafting an agreement from scratch** — start from a template. Each has a Markdown twin you can read directly; most also ship a DOCX, and the rest link out to the publisher's own copy.
- **Reviewing an agreement someone sent you** — start from a reviewer checklist, which names what to look for and why it matters.
- **Checking whether a clause is enforceable somewhere** — start from a practice guide. They are written per jurisdiction because the answer usually is.
- **Citing primary law** — every practice guide carries source cards with verbatim quotes and links to the statute or opinion, so a claim can be checked rather than trusted.
- **Comparing a rule across states** — start from a law survey rather than reading each jurisdiction's guide.
- **Working through a whole task** (closing a financing, hiring an employee) — start from a toolkit, which collects the existing resources for that task and, where one exists, gives an ordered workflow.

## Markdown twins

Individual content pages — a single practice guide, checklist, template,
toolkit or skill — have a machine-readable Markdown twin, advertised in that page's own
`<head>` as `<link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown">`.

The six landing pages linked above are hubs and have **no** twin, and neither
do tools, surveys, clause pages or the other marketing pages.

**There is no universal "append .md to the URL" rule.** Twin URLs are
per-family:

- Practice guides, checklists and essays — `<route>.md`, e.g. `https://openagreements.org/practice-guides/non-compete/us/california.md`
- Templates — `/templates/<slug>/template.md`, e.g. `https://openagreements.org/templates/bonterms-mutual-nda/template.md`
- Agent skills — `/skills/<slug>/SKILL.md`, e.g. `https://openagreements.org/skills/nda/SKILL.md`
- Toolkits — `/toolkits/<slug>.md`, e.g. `https://openagreements.org/toolkits/review-venture-financing-documents.md`

Read the `rel="alternate"` link rather than constructing the URL: the twin a
page advertises is the authoritative one.

## Machine-readable capability

- [Sitemap](https://openagreements.org/sitemap.xml)
- [Agent skills index](https://openagreements.org/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) — every published skill, each with the SHA-256 digest of its archive.
- [MCP server card](https://openagreements.org/.well-known/mcp-server-card.json)
- [API catalog](https://openagreements.org/.well-known/api-catalog.json) and [OpenAPI description](https://openagreements.org/.well-known/openapi.json)
- [Agent card](https://openagreements.org/.well-known/agent-card.json)
- [AI capabilities](https://openagreements.org/.well-known/ai/capabilities.json) and [publisher entity](https://openagreements.org/.well-known/ai/entity.json)

## License

Content is CC BY 4.0. Templates based on third-party forms carry their source's
own terms, stated on each template page. A form hosted by its publisher, such as
the NVCA model documents, is not covered by CC BY 4.0 and is not redistributed
here.