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TheTerms Docs

Introduction

What is TheTerms?

Section titled “What is TheTerms?”

TheTerms is an open-source platform for managing documents, contracts, and policies that require signatures. Organisations create containers of documents with structured clauses, then invite signers via email. Signers review and accept or reject individual clauses through a simple web interface — no account required.

Unlike traditional e-signature platforms that treat agreements as monolithic PDFs, TheTerms models documents as structured data. Each clause can be independently accepted or rejected, giving organisations granular insight into which terms their signers agree to and which they don’t.

TheTerms is fully open-source under AGPL-3.0. Self-hosters get the complete feature set with no artificial limitations.

Key Concepts

Section titled “Key Concepts”

Containers

Section titled “Containers”

A container is the top-level organiser. Think of it as a project folder — for example, “Employee Onboarding” or “Vendor Agreement 2026”. Containers hold one or more documents.

Documents

Section titled “Documents”

A document lives inside a container and represents a specific agreement. For example, “Non-Disclosure Agreement” or “Acceptable Use Policy”. Documents support versioning.

Versions

Section titled “Versions”

Each document can have multiple versions in different states:

  • Draft — work in progress, not yet visible to signers
  • Active — the published version that signers see
  • Archived — previous versions kept for audit purposes

Clauses

Section titled “Clauses”

A version contains one or more clauses — the individual terms or sections of the agreement. Clauses support rich text (bold, italic, links, lists) and can be reordered via drag-and-drop.

Crucially, signers accept or reject each clause independently. This gives you a per-clause acceptance matrix rather than a single “I agree” checkbox.

Signing Requests

Section titled “Signing Requests”

A signing request is an invitation sent to someone to review and sign a document version. Each request generates a unique, time-limited token URL. The signer does not need an account — they click the link, review clauses, and submit their decisions.

Organisations and Roles

Section titled “Organisations and Roles”

Each organisation is fully isolated (multi-tenant). Team members are assigned one of four roles:

RolePermissions
OwnerFull control, can transfer ownership
AdminManage team, create/edit/delete all content
EditorCreate and edit documents, send invitations
ViewerRead-only access to all content

How It Works

Section titled “How It Works”
  1. Create — Build documents with structured clauses using the rich text editor
  2. Invite — Send signing invitations by email or CSV bulk import
  3. Sign — Signers review and accept/reject each clause individually
  4. Track — Full audit trail with IP address, user agent, and timestamp

Next Steps

Section titled “Next Steps”