Worked example · a £6,400 identity project · illustrative figures, real routes
The product is the standard, plus the rails
One deal, end to end. Nothing on trust.
Aldermill, a two-person brand studio, takes a £6,400 logo and identity project for a Manchester coffee roaster. This page walks that one deal through every facet of onTerms: plain words in, bounded choices, pinned terms, a signed data object, a public log entry. The figures are a worked example. The routes are real, and the whole read path needs no login.
The description
Say the deal in plain words.
The composer at /sign takes the deal as you would say it to a colleague. No drafting, no clause-picking. The AI reads the description and proposes the choices in the next facet. It cannot write a line of the contract.
- The who, the fee, the dates, who owns the work. That is all it needs.
- The AI fills the Elections, not the law. The contract text stays fixed.
Describe your deal
How the studio is paid
enum · fixed_fee | time_and_materials
Days to pay each invoice
integer · floor 14 · ceiling 60
Days to review a deliverable
integer · floor 3 · ceiling 20 · silence counts as acceptance
Who owns the finished work
enum · assigned_on_payment | licensed
Liability cap, as a multiple of fees
number · floor 1 · ceiling 5 · steps of 0.25
Governing law
fixed in the order · courts of England and Wales
validated against schema/elections/proserv-1.0-ew.elections.json
The choices
Bounded choices, not clauses.
What the AI proposes are Elections: the commercial choices the standard deliberately leaves open. Price, dates, who owns the work, where the liability cap sits. Each one is typed and validated against a published JSON Schema, with a floor and a ceiling. A choice outside the bounds does not validate. The law itself is not on the table.
The standard
Terms named by their own hash.
The contract text does not travel with the deal. The deal points at it. Every module lives at a fixed URL under /t and is named by the SHA-256 of its content. Change one character and the name changes. Reading is free, no account, and one sentence in any order adopts the terms.
The incorporation sentence
This Order incorporates by reference the onTerms Standard Terms onterms:proserv:1.0.0:EW, available at https://onterms.org/t/proserv/1.0.0/EW and verifiable against SHA-256 sha256:18fe85ff40099e823d2566d65e0b1242215698024aa0c5ed9f672f9868a194e1. Each party acts in the course of its business and not as a consumer.
live values, read from the published corpus · the same clause is on every terms page
The signature
A passkey signs the data, not a PDF.
When both sides commit, a passkey signs the order itself: the parties, the pinned terms and every Election. There is no separate file to drift away from what was agreed. The thing you sign and the thing that governs the deal are the same thing.
- The key stays in your device. onTerms never holds it.
- One changed word breaks the hash. Tampering is visible to anyone who checks.
{
"incorporated_modules": ["onterms:proserv:1.0.0:EW"],
"parties": {
"provider": "Aldermill Studio Ltd",
"customer": "Casterbridge Coffee Roasters Ltd"
},
"commercial": {
"currency": "GBP",
"total_recurring_amount": "6400.00",
"payment_terms_days": 14,
"order_term": { "initial_term_months": 3 }
},
"elections": {
"ip.deliverables": "assigned_on_payment",
"liability.capMultiple": 1,
"governing_law": "EW"
},
"execution": { "order_hash": "sha256:4b0e…d91a" }
}the shape, condensed · field names are real · the parties and the hash are illustrative, not a signed order
The log
The proof is not a PDF in a drawer.
It is a public log entry anyone can verify. Signing anchors the order hash into a Merkle transparency log. The log is append-only: entries are added, never edited, never removed. Rewriting history would change the tree head, and anyone holding an older head would see it.
“Anyone can verify inclusion offline against the operator key. No need to trust onTerms.”
Transparency log · one entry
anchoredRewrite any entry and the root hash changes. Every real entry carries a signed tree head and an inclusion proof, so the check works offline.
Try it
The free tier is the demo.
There is no sandbox to request, because the real thing is free to walk. Reading and verifying need no account. Signing is free for 3 standard onSign executions a month, no card.
England and Wales, end to end.
onTerms 1.0 targets one legal system and finishes the job. The terms, the dictionary, the Elections schemas, the verifier checks and the courts clause all speak the law of England and Wales. That is the scope of the standard: one jurisdiction, done properly, enforced at every layer rather than promised in a footnote.
One law
Governing law and the courts of England and Wales are fixed in every order, so the forum is settled before any dispute.
One operator
The rails are operated by Rated Counsel Limited, registered in England and Wales. The standard itself is published under CC-BY-4.0.
Walk your own deal through.
Describe it in plain words. Three signings a month are free, and the reading never costs anything.