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Overview of Playbooks

Last updated: 8 July 2026

Playbooks are at the heart of DraftPilot’s AI-driven contract review process. A playbook captures your team’s agreed positions on the clauses that matter, and gives the AI the reference it needs to screen contracts, identify potential issues, and suggest how to bring them back in line.

This overview explains what a playbook is, why every review relies on one, and the benefits a team gets once its positions are written down.

Why Playbooks Matter

  • The AI reviews against your positions: DraftPilot’s AI needs a playbook to review a contract. The playbook tells it which topics to look for and what position your team is prepared to accept on each one.

  • Consistency and compliance: Because every review runs against the same written positions, you can be confident that contracts adhere to your organisation’s policies and industry standards, whoever runs the review.

  • Your judgement, captured: A playbook turns the experience in your team’s heads into guidance everyone can use, so good practice spreads beyond the people who wrote it.

  • Built for how you negotiate: A playbook can reflect the way you negotiate for a particular client, industry, or transaction type, rather than applying a single one-size-fits-all stance.

Using Playbooks in Contract Reviews

With a playbook in place, DraftPilot’s AI can:

  • Screen contracts: Review a contract against your playbook to identify deviations and potential issues.

  • Flag issues: Highlight clauses that don’t align with your agreed positions.

  • Provide suggestions: Offer drafting suggestions and alternative language to bring the contract in line with your preferences.

  • Implement changes: Let you accept or modify suggestions directly within MS Word.

Benefits of Using Playbooks

  • Efficiency: Focus the review on the areas that matter, instead of reading every clause from scratch.

  • Risk mitigation: Catch unfavourable terms early, while they are still easy to change.

  • Consistency at scale: Give every reviewer the same starting point, whether they are experienced or new to a contract type.

  • Faster negotiations: Pre-approved fallback positions let a negotiation move on without a fresh escalation each time.

  • Continuous improvement: Update a playbook as regulations, risk appetite, or market practice change, and every future review benefits.

How a Playbook Is Built

Every playbook starts from your own materials. DraftPilot uses AI to turn what your team already has into structured positions:

  • Your own documents: a contract template, a marked-up negotiation, executed agreements, or your contracting guidelines.

  • An existing playbook: import a playbook or negotiation checklist you already use, including any internal notes you want to keep.

  • A description: if you have no documents to hand, describe the contract and who you represent, and the AI will draft a starting point.

The guided AI chat playbook builder walks you through this step by step: it tells you which documents will give the best results and asks how you’d like to handle anything they don’t cover.

Once a playbook exists, you can edit it by hand or open Refine Playbook to adjust it by chatting with the AI. See Edit and refine a playbook.

Getting Started with Playbooks

  • Build your first playbook: Start with the AI chat playbook builder and use whatever documents you have, even if that is only a description.

  • Review and adjust: Check the positions the AI proposes and change anything that doesn’t match how your team negotiates.

  • Put it to work: Select the playbook when you run a review, then refine it as you learn what comes up.