The known default point is a big one, and making deviations visible is something we spend a lot of time thinking about. In our software, we make it easy for our users (and their customers) to know that nothing has been sneakily modified.
We don't yet have a straightforward way to do that for people who are using the contracts on their own outside the software. The best bet for now is probably something like a text diffing tool or Microsoft Word's built in comparisons.
We have some ideas for a native validator for the standards that IMO would be a better solution for those kinds of cases.
Have you seen Ink & Switch's Upwelling (https://www.inkandswitch.com/upwelling/)? I think you might find it at least a little interesting, although it's more focused on non-fiction (where you trust all parties) than contracts. From a user perspective, it provides version control, diffing and both collaborative and private editing, all things that seem like they would be very useful when creating & editing contracts.
I had not seen that, thanks for sharing. As you said, this is a different kind of version control from what we offer, but I think we could borrow some of their ideas, or at least use it as inspiration. It's very cool
We don't yet have a straightforward way to do that for people who are using the contracts on their own outside the software. The best bet for now is probably something like a text diffing tool or Microsoft Word's built in comparisons.
We have some ideas for a native validator for the standards that IMO would be a better solution for those kinds of cases.