Agreement · Technology, Media & Telecommunications / IT Contracts
Software development agreement with AI coding-assistant and open-source terms
Original Australian-law agreement for custom software development that controls developers' use of AI coding assistants, deals with ownership of AI-assisted code and the human-authorship gap, manages open-source licences and SBOMs, and sets acceptance, warranty and IP indemnity terms.
- Kind
- Agreement. A contract between two or more parties.
- Where it applies
- Australia
- AI use
- Yellow AI can help in set ways. A lawyer checks specific points before use.
- Law stated as at
- 17 October 2026
- Status
- Maintained. Checked against the cited sources on 17 October 2026.
- Version
- 1
- Source
- Written for this library
When to use it
Use when a client commissions custom software, an app or integration from a developer or agency, especially where the developer's team uses AI coding assistants. For SaaS subscriptions use the SaaS agreement; for staff augmentation on time-and-materials terms, adapt clauses 4 to 6 into the services contract.
How AI may be used
AI may draft the statement of work and schedules from the proposal, and check the agreement against the client's playbook. A lawyer settles the IP position, the AI coding controls and the warranty and indemnity package.
AI may
- Draft the statement of work, milestones and acceptance criteria from the proposal for the lawyer and client to check.
- Build the approved AI tools schedule from the developer's written confirmations about tool settings.
- Compare an SBOM or licence scan with the prohibited licence list and flag items for review.
AI must not
- Must not decide whether copyright subsists in particular code or who owns it; that depends on the facts of human authorship.
- Must not put the client's confidential source code or specifications into a tool that trains on inputs.
- Must not classify an open-source licence as permissive or copyleft without the lawyer or a licence tool confirming it.
The lawyer checks
- Chain of title: written assignments from contractors and moral rights consents from individual developers.
- The approved AI tools schedule reflects enterprise settings the developer actually uses (no training, retention, code-matching filters).
- Open-source obligations for the intended distribution model (internal use, SaaS, app store or on-premises distribution).
Method: how the Green, Yellow and Red levels are decided. This is guidance for planning, not legal advice.
Read the full text
The full text is for signed-in accounts. It is free. When you sign in you can:
- read the whole precedent, with its drafting notes beside it;
- copy it, or download it as a Word file or Markdown;
- add it to your firm’s knowledge base, so colleagues can find it;
- let the AI tools you connect read it from that knowledge base.
The summary, the law it rests on and the AI-use guidance above stay public. Privacy.
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