Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about Guard-Clause, contract analysis, and how we handle your data.
What is Guard-Clause?
Guard-Clause is an AI-powered contract analysis platform. Upload any contract — PDF, DOCX, or plain text — and receive clause-level risk analysis, negotiation scripts, replacement language, and an overall risk score. It is designed to make contract review practical and affordable for freelancers, founders, employees, and small teams who would otherwise sign without a full legal review.
How does Guard-Clause analyze contracts?
Guard-Clause extracts the full text of your uploaded contract and sends it to an AI model (Claude by Anthropic) for analysis. The AI reads every clause, identifies risk patterns, and produces structured findings with direct citations — including the exact excerpt, section, and page number. Each finding includes a severity rating, a plain-language explanation of why it matters, a negotiation script you can use with the other party, and replacement clause language you can propose. The entire process takes minutes.
Is my contract stored?
By default, no. Your uploaded file is read into server memory, text is extracted, and the file buffer is discarded immediately. The extracted text is held in an ephemeral Redis cache with a 15-minute time-to-live and is automatically deleted after analysis completes or after 15 minutes, whichever comes first. If you choose to save your report, only the AI-generated analysis is stored — never the original contract text. You can delete saved reports at any time from your dashboard.
What contract types does Guard-Clause support?
Guard-Clause supports any contract in PDF, DOCX, or plain-text format. Common use cases include NDAs, employment agreements, freelance contracts, offer letters, SaaS agreements, contractor agreements, vendor agreements, agency contracts, partnership agreements, retainer agreements, and severance agreements. The AI adapts its analysis to the contract type and your role — whether you are a freelancer, founder, employee, or agency.
Who built Guard-Clause?
Guard-Clause was built by Ali Morgan, founder of Jonomor — a systems architecture studio focused on building real-time infrastructure intelligence tools. Guard-Clause is part of the Jonomor ecosystem, a family of products that apply structured analysis to high-stakes everyday decisions. You can learn more at jonomor.com.
How is Guard-Clause different from hiring a lawyer?
Guard-Clause is not a substitute for legal counsel — it is a complement. A traditional attorney review can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars and take days to schedule. Guard-Clause delivers clause-level analysis in minutes at a fraction of the cost, making it practical to review every contract, not just the ones you can afford to send to a lawyer. For high-stakes agreements, we recommend using Guard-Clause as a starting point to identify risks and prepare questions, then consulting a qualified attorney for the edge cases. No attorney-client relationship is formed by using Guard-Clause.
Still have questions? support@guard-clause.com