Most contracts are written for a world that pauses.
A human decides. A system acts. If something changes, someone notices, and the contract responds. That rhythm is baked into representations, notice provisions, audit rights, and remediation clauses.
AI is quietly breaking that rhythm.
As software begins to monitor, decide, and act continuously within defined parameters, contracts are starting to show strain. Not because anyone suddenly believes machines are autonomous in a sci-fi sense, but because the assumptions underlying contract structure no longer map cleanly to how systems behave.
What ‘Agentic’ Means Without The Hype
Strip away the buzzwords, and “agentic” AI isn’t about independent intent. It’s about continuity.
These systems don’t wait for discrete instructions. They operate within guardrails, monitor signals in real time, and act unless or until a threshold is crossed. Humans still define the boundaries, but they aren’t involved in every decision.
That distinction matters legally. Contracts have always governed action. They just assumed action happened in bursts rather than streams.
Why Static Promises Break Down In Continuous Systems
Traditional contracts rely heavily on static commitments. Representations are made at signing. Audits occur periodically. Notices are triggered by identifiable events.
Continuous systems blur those lines. Models update. Context shifts. Decisions accumulate gradually rather than occurring at a single moment in time.
When behavior evolves continuously, it becomes harder to answer basic contractual questions: When did something change? When should notice have been given? Which obligation applies to which version of the system?
Static promises aren’t wrong. They’re incomplete.
The Early Signals Lawyers Started Seeing In 2025
This isn’t a story about mass adoption. It’s about early signals.
In 2025, a subset of commercial agreements began reflecting discomfort with purely static governance. Lawyers started experimenting, cautiously, with clauses that acknowledge ongoing behavior rather than one-time events.
Those signals showed up as conditional permissions instead of blanket authorizations. Event-based notifications replaced calendar-based ones. Audit rights were tied to system behavior or material changes rather than annual schedules. Override mechanisms and escalation triggers appeared where none existed before.
None of this was standardized. None of it was uniform. But it was consistent enough to suggest a shift in how lawyers were thinking about risk.
From Static Obligations To Conditional Execution
The underlying change is subtle but important.
Instead of promising that a system will behave a certain way forever, contracts are beginning to define how obligations change when behavior crosses defined boundaries. If a threshold is exceeded, additional controls apply. If a system adapts materially, disclosures update. If automated decisions move into new categories, escalation occurs.
This doesn’t make contracts predictive. It makes them responsive.
In that sense, contracts start to look less like static promises and more like rulebooks. They don’t dictate every outcome. They define how to respond as outcomes evolve.
Why This Matters Even If Clients Aren’t Asking Yet
Most clients aren’t asking for “agentic AI” clauses. They don’t need to.
They are asking why a system behaved differently over time. They are asking when a change became material. They are asking who was supposed to notice and when.
Those questions surface after something goes wrong. Contracts that only speak in static terms struggle to answer them.
This is where friction will show up first. Not in futurist debates, but in disputes where parties argue about timing, notice, and scope in systems that never really stopped running.
Where The Risk Sits For Lawyers
For practitioners, the risk isn’t failing to predict the future. It’s failing to acknowledge continuity.
Contracts that define escalation paths, thresholds, and oversight mechanisms age better than those that assume stasis. They don’t eliminate risk, but they make behavior legible when it matters most.
Saying “we didn’t anticipate that behavior” is unlikely to be a persuasive position in a world where systems are designed to adapt.
Early versions of these patterns appeared across a subset of 2025 commercial agreements and are examined in more detail in a recent Contract Trust Report exploring how contracts are adapting to continuous systems.
The Quiet Shift Underway
This isn’t about rewriting every contract for autonomous agents. It’s about recognizing that software no longer waits for humans to act before it does.
Contracts don’t need to predict every outcome. They need to define how systems behave when outcomes evolve. The shift toward governing continuous behavior has already begun, quietly and unevenly.
By the time it feels obvious, it will be too late to treat it as theoretical.
Olga V. Mack is the CEO of TermScout, where she builds legal systems that make contracts faster to understand, easier to operate, and more trustworthy in real business conditions. Her work focuses on how legal rules allocate power, manage risk, and shape decisions under uncertainty. A serial CEO and former General Counsel, Olga previously led a legal technology company through acquisition by LexisNexis. She teaches at Berkeley Law and is a Fellow at CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics. She has authored several books on legal innovation and technology, delivered six TEDx talks, and her insights regularly appear in Forbes, Bloomberg Law, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, and Above the Law. Across her work, she treats law as infrastructure, something that should be reliable, legible, and intentionally designed for how organizations actually operate.
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