Internal note, remove before issue. This document has not yet been reviewed by a solicitor. Get clauses 7 (ownership), 8 (originality), 9 (AI disclosure) and 13 (liability) reviewed once, as a fixed fee, before the first customer sees it. Confirm the governing law in clause 14 matches the contracting entity. Confirm the tax wording in clause 4 with an accountant, including the cross-border position for US customers.
Checked against the product on 30 September 2026. Ask the solicitor about three gaps. There is no data protection clause and no reference to the subprocessors in the security summary, although briefs and uploads can contain personal data and go to the model providers and Proofed. Clause 10's thirty-day deletion covers Austen's own systems only: the code does not delete copies held by Proofed, Stylus or the model providers, or in backups. Clause 11 lets confidential information go to a subcontractor bound by equivalent obligations, so confirm the model providers' and Proofed's terms meet that. Schedule A was brought into line with the product on 30 September: sources are linked in the text, the edit is reviewed as tracked changes inside Austen, and the word-count tolerance is 15%, the length gate's own limit (it was 10%). Two promises are still manual work. The tracked changes in clause 1(d) can only be seen inside Austen, so the buyer needs a login, and nothing flags a claim for sign-off automatically (criterion 3). Austen asks Proofed for proofreading unless production configuration says otherwise, so confirm the service requested matches the "professional edit" in clauses 1(d) and 6.
| Between | [Your company name], company number [number], registered office [address] ("we", "us", "our") |
| And | [Customer legal name], company number [number], registered office [address] ("you", "your") |
| Date | [date] |
We will produce ten (10) finished articles from ten (10) briefs you approve, within thirty (30) days of the kickoff call. Each article is:
One finished piece of up to 1,500 words, produced from one approved brief and human-edited once. A piece above 1,500 words counts pro rata against the ten, rounded up to the nearest half.
If briefs are not approved within five working days of being sent, the thirty-day window extends by the length of the delay.
$2,500 (two thousand five hundred United States dollars), excluding VAT or sales tax, payable in full before work begins. No other charge arises under this agreement. [Tax wording, confirmed by an accountant]
Design, stock photography, link building, ongoing strategy, articles beyond the ten, translation at volume, rewrites of an article produced to a brief you approved and subsequently changed, and any second full edit after you have rewritten a delivered article yourself. Any of these can be quoted separately.
Each article includes one professional edit. If a delivered article does not meet the acceptance criteria at Schedule A, tell us within seven days of delivery and we will revise it at no charge until it does.
On payment in full, all right, title and interest in the delivered articles, briefs and images passes to you, worldwide and in perpetuity, with no attribution requirement. We retain no licence to reuse, republish or reference the deliverables, and we will not name you as a customer, publish a case study about you, or use your logo without your prior written consent.
Articles are generated from your approved brief and are not assembled from copied text. Research sources are used to ground the article, not reproduced in it. We do not run an automatic plagiarism scan unless that is agreed at kickoff and priced. If you identify a genuine match with existing published text, we will rewrite that article at no charge.
Articles are produced by an AI content pipeline from a brief you approve, and are edited by a professional human editor before delivery. Whether you disclose that to your readers is your decision. We will supply a disclosure line on request, will not object to disclosure and will not require it. Where a platform rule, a client contract or a professional obligation requires disclosure, meeting that obligation is your responsibility.
We use the material you give us only to produce your articles. We will not use it for any other customer, as a sample, or in marketing. You may ask us to delete it at any time after delivery and we will do so within thirty days.
Neither of us will disclose the other's confidential information to a third party except where required by law or to a subcontractor bound by equivalent obligations. This clause survives the end of this agreement by two years.
Either of us may end this agreement at any time by written notice. You keep every article delivered and every brief approved up to that point. Fees for work already delivered are not refundable. Fees paid for undelivered articles are refunded within fourteen days.
Our total liability under or in connection with this agreement is limited to the fees you have paid under it. Neither of us is liable to the other for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, or loss of anticipated savings. Nothing in this agreement limits or excludes liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded.
This agreement is governed by the laws of [England and Wales] and both of us submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of its courts.
An article is accepted when all six of the following are true.
| # | Criterion | How it is checked |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | It matches the approved brief. Every H2 in the approved brief is present, the angle is the angle you approved, and the word count is within 15% of the budget in the brief. | Against the approved brief document |
| 2 | It is in your voice. It follows the style guide and tone of voice profile agreed at kickoff. Banned words and constructions do not appear. No em dashes or en dashes appear anywhere. | Style guide and banned-word list agreed at kickoff |
| 3 | It is accurate as far as we can make it. Researched examples and figures link to their sources in the text. A claim requiring your reviewer's sign-off is flagged rather than asserted. | The source links in the article |
| 4 | It has been proofread by a person. A professional editor at Proofed has proofread it, and their tracked changes and comments can be reviewed change by change in Austen. | The track-changes review in Austen |
| 5 | It has been optimised for search and AI answer engines, and both of Austen's scores are delivered with it as they stand. A score below 90 is reported, not treated as a failure. | The two scores delivered with each article |
| 6 | It is publishable. Title, meta description, headings, internal links where specified and hero image are present and correct. | The delivered file |
Each of those is welcome and is treated as a new brief rather than a revision.
Reply to the delivery email within seven days naming the criterion above that has not been met. We revise at no charge until it is met.