Today's Agent Skill: Contract Redline Review
What It Does
Comparing two versions of a contract by eye is slow and error-prone — a single word swap in a liability clause can slip past a tired reviewer. An agent that automatically diffs contract drafts and explains what changed in plain business terms turns a 45-minute manual comparison into a 2-minute check.
How It Works
The skill takes two versions of a document, runs a structural diff to isolate added, removed, and reworded clauses, then classifies each change by risk category (liability, payment terms, termination, IP, confidentiality) and drafts a plain-English summary of what shifted and why it matters commercially.
How to Deploy It
Drop the SKILL.md file into any agent's skills directory (e.g. ~/.claude/skills/contract-redline-review/) alongside the two contract files you want compared, then invoke it by name or let trigger-phrase matching fire automatically when a user pastes two document versions. No external dependencies are required beyond the agent's native file-read and diff capabilities.
SKILL.md — Ready to Deploy
## Description
Compares two versions of a contract or legal document, isolates substantive changes (not just formatting), and produces a risk-categorized summary of what changed and why it matters to the business.
## Trigger
Activates when a user provides two versions of the same document (e.g. "redline this", "compare v1 and v2", "what changed in the new contract", "diff these two agreements") or uploads a tracked-changes file.
## Input
- Two document versions (original and revised), as plain text, PDF, or DOCX
- Optional: the reviewer's role or focus area (e.g. "I care about liability and payment terms")
## Steps
1. Extract text from both versions, normalizing whitespace and formatting artifacts.
2. Run a clause-level diff to identify additions, deletions, and reworded sections — ignore purely cosmetic changes (renumbering, font, whitespace).
3. For each substantive change, classify it into a risk category: liability, indemnification, payment terms, termination, IP ownership, confidentiality, dispute resolution, or other.
4. For each classified change, write a one-sentence plain-English explanation of what changed and a one-sentence note on why it matters to the business.
5. FCopy the full SKILL.md and drop it into your agent's skills directory to activate this skill.