Contract Family Agent organizes related contracts into parent-child hierarchies. This Early Access Program (EAP) feature helps teams understand the full relationship between contracts such as Master Service Agreements (MSAs), Statements of Work (SOWs), and amendments.
Use Case
Use Contract Family Agent when related agreements are difficult to connect manually and you need a clearer view of the commercial relationship behind a customer or vendor record. For example, if you have a master agreement plus multiple SOWs and amendments for the same relationship, Contract Family Agent can organize those agreements into one structured family view.
Prerequisites
| Features | Entities, Contract Families, Contract Family Agent |
| Permissions |
|
Release: This article describes features and functionality planned for our October release. Some features may not be available until October 8, 2026.
Ironclad Early Access Program: This feature is in Early Access and may change before it is generally available. If you interested in this feature, please reach out to your Ironclad representative or Support to see if you're eligible for EAP access.
What’s the Contract Family Agent?
Contract Family Agent analyzes contracts associated with an entity and organizes them into a parent, child, and amendment hierarchy to create a structured family view.
Contract Family Agent builds on the existing contract families functionality:
- Contract Families lets you view and manage related contracts. Learn more about Contract Families in Ironclad.
- Contract Family Agent helps organize those relationships automatically instead of requiring manual tagging and linking.
Note:
The entity record must exist in Ironclad before you run the agent. Contracts do not need to be pre-tagged with the entity.
Ask Questions About Contract Families in Ironclad Agent
Release: This article describes features and functionality planned for our October release. Some features may not be available until October 8, 2026.
Name Change: Starting October 8, 2026, Ironclad Assistant is becoming Ironclad Agent. The name is changing to reflect its expanded ability to help you access contracts and workflows, ask questions, and take action with specialized agents. Your existing access carries over.
You can use Ironclad Agent (formerly Ironclad Assistant) to ask questions about contracts associated with an entity and the relationships between those contracts. Agent can help you find entity-linked contracts, return contract counts, explain parent, child, and amendment relationships, and open the entity’s Contracts view.
For example, you can ask:
What SOWs and amendments are tied to the Acme MSA?
How many contracts do I have with Noe & Associates?
Find an agreement with Lazer Technologies.
Ironclad Agent asks a follow-up question when it cannot confidently identify the entity in your question. It can also ask you to specify an agreement type when your request is incomplete.
How Contract Family Relationships Are Identified
The agent evaluates contract content and supporting metadata:
- Contract Language. The agent reads the agreement text for references to a governing agreement. For example, language indicating that an SOW, Order Form, or amendment is governed by or modifies a specific MSA.
- Parties/Counterparty Resolution. Where later sections of a contract use generic labels such as Company, Customer, or Vendor, the agent uses the named parties in the agreement text to determine the counterparty. The agent derives counterparty identity from the document where possible, rather than relying on the counterparty metadata field alone.
- Dates and Amendment Language. Amendment preambles typically name the parties and reference the original agreement by type and date. The agent uses these cues to connect an amendment to the correct parent record.
Contract Relationship Labels
Each parent link can have one of these relationship labels:
- Amendment: An incremental change, side letter, addendum, or extension that modifies a specific document.
- Governed by: An Order Form, SOW, schedule, or other sub-agreement that operates under a master agreement.
Results that are not clear-cut are routed to the verification queue.
Why would a contract not appear in a contract family?
The Contract Family Agent scopes each run to contracts that belong to the selected entity and relationship side. A contract may not appear in the family tree for one of the following reasons:
- Wrong relationship side: Each run covers one relationship type at a time: Vendor, Customer, or Partner. Run the agent again for another relationship type when needed.
- Relationship side could not be determined: Documents without a clear Vendor, Customer, or Partner designation, such as mutual NDAs or internal memos, may be categorized as Other and skipped from a side-specific run.
- Counterparty mismatch: The contract does not reference the selected counterparty in its text or properties.
- Incomplete extraction: The contract is image-only without OCR, mostly blank, or encountered an extraction error. Contract Family Agent excludes it rather than guessing at a link.
- Supporting document: A SOC report, security questionnaire, audit attestation, or similar supplement may remain standalone when it does not directly reference the master agreement by name or date. You can attach it manually after the run.
Contract Family Agent Verification Queue
When the Contract Family Agent isn't confident enough to auto-resolve a case, it'll redirect it into a review queue to flag for human review.
The queue surfaces at least two types of cases for review:
- Flagged contracts where the agent found a possible family relationship but needs a person to confirm it.
- Abandoned contracts that appear relevant to the entity but couldn't be confidently placed in the tree.
You can access the queue inside the Entities workspace as a dedicated review area tied to the selected entity.
Known Limitations
These are limitations in the current release (EAP), and may be resolved by the time it's generally available:
| Limitation | Workaround |
|---|---|
| The agent runs on one relationship type per entity at a time. | Run Contract Family Agent again for another relationship type. |
| Cross-entity master lookups are not supported in the EAP. | Reviewers can create the relationship manually or move the master under the correct entity. |
| Link quality depends on the extracted contract profile. | Ensure contract properties are extracted before running the agent. |
| The agent does not automatically rerun when new contracts are ingested. | Rerun Contract Family Agent from the entity’s Contracts view after a large ingestion event. |
| English contracts perform best. Non-English contracts are supported on a best-effort basis. | Review mixed-language portfolios carefully for linkage accuracy. |
| Very deep or multi-master hierarchies may not fully resolve. | Review and adjust the family manually after the run. |
FAQs
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Does Contract Family Agent respect permissions? | Yes. Only users with access to the entity and its contracts can run the agent and view the proposed family tree. |
| Can Contract Family Agent access contracts outside the selected entity? | No. Contract Family Agent evaluates contracts in the selected entity and relationship type. It does not broaden user access. |
Resources
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