Fine Print
You've signed dozens of contracts you'll never reread. Fine Print reads them for you.
Fine Print is a phone app with an AI agent for your personal agreements: leases, mortgages, phone plans, warranties, anything with terms and conditions. It files your agreements, notices what's coming due, asks you plain questions about your situation, and helps you take the next small step, like drafting a move-out notice.
Created by Joann Dobish for Devpost's Build With AI: Basics hackathon, October 2026.
Not legal advice. Fine Print is a comprehension and guidance tool. It explains public rules in plain language and drafts standard documents for you to review. It doesn't replace a lawyer.
What it does
- Reads an uploaded agreement (PDF or photo) and works out its type, the other party, key dates, whether it's signed, and the contacts in it.
- Files it under a clean name (
date-party-purpose.pdf) in categories: Housing, Medical, Financial, Marriage, Estate, Work and Other.
- Asks you a plain question about where you stand. For example: "This fixed-term tenancy ended 2 months ago. Are you looking to renew with your landlord?"
- Helps you act. Say "No, I want to move out" and it explains Alberta's notice rule, asks about anything missing (like the landlord's address), and drafts an editable Notice to End Tenancy as a PDF. The end date and deliver-by date are calculated in code.
- Lists dates and actions for a mortgage (payments, tax and insurance proof, renewal), and offers a celebration post for a new home, without your address, amounts or lender.
- Adds dates to your calendar as a calendar file, with reminders. Repeating dates (like payments) stop when the agreement ends.
- Saves contacts from an agreement to your phone contacts, with a note about which agreement they came from.
- Keeps each agreement's page and conversation history, so you can continue a past chat, start a new one, or delete it.
- Five themes: Linen, Midnight, Heirloom, Popstar and Large Script (larger text, high contrast). It also has 🔊 read aloud.
Try it with the demo agreements
The sign-in screen links to three fictional sample agreements. You can also find them in samples/:
sample-alberta-lease.pdf: a one-year Alberta lease that has ended. The landlord's address is deliberately missing.sample-mortgage.pdf: a signed home mortgage.sample-employment-contract.pdf: a two-page job offer, good for trying the camera (photograph both pages).
Every name, company, address and number in them is invented.
How it works
Phone (the app) ──► Helper on Vercel (/api/agent) ──► Claude (Anthropic API)
screens, themes, adds the agent's instructions, reads the contract once,
notice + PDF, holds the hidden API key, answers in a fixed format
saved on the phone checks the reply's format the app can act on
The AI decides what to say; the app decides what's allowed. Legal rules (Alberta's notice rule) are written into the agent's instructions word for word, and dates are calculated in code.
public/: the app (plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, no framework)api/agent.js: the helper (a Vercel Function)lib/ai.js: the only file that knows which AI is used, so it can be swapped (e.g. for Gemini, or a user's own model)lib/prompts.js: the agent's instructions and the Alberta ruledevpost/: the planning documents (scope, product requirements, technical spec, build checklist)
Privacy and your data
This is a hackathon demo shell, shown with fictional sample documents. An uploaded agreement is sent to one hosted AI (Claude) through the helper to be read. Nothing is stored on the server, and your agreements and chats stay on your phone.
Left out on purpose, and next to build:
- secure sign-in with two-factor authentication (the demo sign-in creates no account)
- storage choices (cloud or on-device)
- bring your own AI, so your own key, a private model or an on-device model keeps your agreements confidential
- encryption, delete-anytime, a no-training-on-your-data policy and retention settings
- full jurisdiction handling (the demo's built-in rules cover Alberta tenancies)
Run it locally
node dev-server.js
# open http://localhost:3000
Without an API key it runs in clearly labelled practice mode with canned replies.
Deploy
- Import this repo into Vercel (Add New → Project).
- Add the environment variable
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY (Project → Settings → Environment Variables). Never commit a key; .env.example shows the name only.
- Deploy. Open the link on your phone and choose Add to Home Screen.
License
MIT. Fonts: Figtree, Lora and Fredoka, SIL Open Font License (see public/fonts/). PDF: jsPDF 2.5.1, MIT; PDF.js 3.11.174, Apache 2.0 (see public/vendor/).
