Updated 17 October 2026. A contract can promise a capability that nobody has designed. That is how a commercial sentence becomes an operational surprise several months later.
Translate the promise before signing off
Identify commitments concerning data use, service changes, audit access, incident response and exit. The relevant clauses vary by agreement. Legal specialists assess the terms; product and engineering need to assess whether the proposed service can actually support them.
An illustrative promise to provide audit records should identify which records exist, how access works and what restrictions apply. If the service cannot produce the requested evidence, the team needs to change the promise or build the capability. A vague assurance does neither.
Assign an implementation owner to commitments that require ongoing work. Notification periods, support procedures and evidence retention do not operate themselves. Include the teams that will have to meet the obligation after the deal closes.
Review changes to the service against those commitments. Adding a data processor or changing a deployment path may affect the arrangement. The commercial record should remain connected to the evolving product rather than archived as a completed sales task.
| Question | Evidence or action |
|---|---|
| Promise | Specific obligation or capability |
| Delivery | Implementation and operating owner |
| Evidence | Demonstration or record supporting it |
The practical next step
Choose the most consequential promise in the proposed agreement and trace it to a working process. If the trail ends at “engineering will handle it”, the review is not finished.
Keep the resulting decision, its owner and unresolved questions in a short decision record. For claims about agent behaviour, connect the decision to evaluation evidence rather than relying on a successful demonstration alone.
Further primary reading: NIST AI Risk Management Framework. The review map and product recommendations above are my analysis, not a certification or a legal assessment of a particular deployment.
