Understanding risk flags

Every issue Fusial raises during a redline pass is tagged with a severity: Must have, Should have, Nice to have, or Neutral. The labels are a triage tool — they tell you where to spend the first ten minutes of review and what's safe to defer.

What each level means

Must have

A clause that materially shifts risk against your organization if left as written. You should not sign without a decision. Examples:

• Liability cap removed, raised, or made one-sided.
• Indemnity that's broader than your playbook allows, or uncapped.
• IP assignment that gives the counterparty rights to your background IP.
• Auto-renewal with a notice window shorter than your playbook permits.
• Governing law or jurisdiction in a venue your playbook excludes.

Default behavior: export is blocked while any pending edit remains — including the Must-have ones — so these will gate the recompile by default.

Should have

A meaningful deviation from your playbook that you'd normally negotiate, but isn't a deal-breaker on its own. Examples:

• Payment terms longer than your standard (e.g., Net 60 vs. Net 30).
• Termination-for-convenience window longer than your standard.
• Confidentiality survival period shorter than your playbook.
• Warranty disclaimers that go beyond what you usually accept.

Nice to have

Style, wording, or non-substantive deviations. Worth fixing if it's cheap, fine to defer otherwise. Examples:

• Defined terms used inconsistently.
• Section numbering or cross-reference cleanup.
• Boilerplate phrasing that differs from your template.
• Minor formatting — capitalization, hyphenation.

Neutral

Items the AI surfaced for awareness rather than as a deviation — they don't necessarily violate your playbook. Useful for context.

Where severity comes from

Severity is set by the redline pipeline during its triage stage, calibrated against the playbook context (your jurisdiction, compliance frameworks, governing law preference, dispute resolution preference, and company description). The same context produces consistent severity across passes.

Using severity to triage

The review queue supports filtering by severity. The fastest review loop is usually:

1. Start with Must have. Decide every one.
2. Move to Should have next.
3. Handle Nice to have issues last; many can be deferred until the contract is otherwise ready.

If your team uses assignments, route Must-have issues to your senior reviewer and the rest to the broader team — see Assigning documents to teammates.

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