Services Agreement · Effective 2026-04-23
Services Agreement
Payment Terms
Client shall pay within 15 days of invoice.
The late fee is L = B × 0.015.
The document format for serious work
Structured documents
for high-stakes work.
Atto replaces Word for contracts, term sheets, and research — combining collaborative editing, mathematical notation, and legally-binding execution in a single structured format.
---
title: Services Agreement
document_type: services_agreement
authoring_mode: hybrid
effective_date: 2026-04-23
---
## Payment Terms
Client shall pay within **15 days** of invoice.
The late fee is $L = B \times 0.015$.
::signature-block
- party: Baldwinson Corp.
signer: Curtis Baldwinson
title: CEO
sign_order: 1
::The gap
Word was not built for this.
A signature line in Word is just styled text. A tracked change is a cosmetic marker. A due date is a string. There is no semantic model under the surface — every meaning lives in the author’s head and the reviewer’s intuition.
That works for letters. It breaks for contracts, term sheets, research reports, and anything where the document itself is the event. There is no canonical source of truth, no clean audit trail, no way to prove the file you received is the file that was executed.
LaTeX solved notation and nothing else. No collaboration, no review workflow, no path from draft to executed document. Teams that need mathematical precision end up maintaining two systems — and a third to reconcile them.
Architecture
What Atto is, in three layers.
Atto is a hybrid: Markdown for prose, LaTeX for notation, and a typed directive layer for structure. To see why the hybrid matters, look at what each piece does on its own.
01
Markdown: prose, solved.
Source
# Services Agreement
Between **Atto Technologies Inc.** ("Vendor") and
**Example Corp.** ("Customer"),
effective **April 23, 2026**.
## Scope
- Design consultation
- Proof of concept delivery
- Two rounds of revision
Payment terms are *net thirty*. Preview
Services Agreement
Between Atto Technologies Inc. ("Vendor") and Example Corp. ("Customer"), effective April 23, 2026.
Scope
- Design consultation
- Proof of concept delivery
- Two rounds of revision
Payment terms are net thirty.
Markdown carries prose. It’s portable, diffable, and human-readable in any text editor. But it has no concept of notation, and no concept of meaning — a heading is just a heading, a signature line is just a bold word.
02
LaTeX: notation, solved.
Source
The present value of future cash flows is:
\[
PV = \sum_{t=1}^{T} \frac{C_t}{(1 + r)^t}
\]
where \(C_t\) is the cash flow in period
\(t\) and \(r\)
is the discount rate. Preview
The present value of future cash flows is:
PV = T Σ t=1 Ct (1 + r)twhere Ct is the cash flow in period t and r is the discount rate.
LaTeX renders notation the way a typesetter would. But the ecosystem was built for solo academic authors. No review threads, no signatures, no handoff to collaborators who don’t also write LaTeX.
03
Two systems. A third to reconcile them.
Draft
Microsoft Word
term-sheet.docx
Notation
LaTeX · Overleaf
valuation.tex
Signature
DocuSign
executed.pdf
Three workflows. No canonical document. The reconciliation is someone’s job — and the executed PDF has no semantic relationship to the draft that was reviewed.
04
Atto: one source, all three layers.
Source
# Services Agreement
Between **Atto Technologies Inc.** ("Vendor") and
**Example Corp.**, effective
**April 23, 2026**.
## Compensation
Vendor will be paid in quarterly installments, with net present value:
$$
PV = \sum_{t=1}^{T} \frac{C_t}{(1 + r)^t}
$$
::signature-block
party: Atto Technologies Inc.
signer: Curtis Baldwinson
title: CEO
sign_order: 1
:: Preview
Services Agreement
Between Atto Technologies Inc. ("Vendor") and Example Corp., effective April 23, 2026.
Compensation
Vendor will be paid in quarterly installments, with net present value:
PV = T Σ t=1 Ct (1 + r)tOne source file. Markdown prose, LaTeX notation, and typed directives — all parsed to a single deterministic tree. Diffable in git, reviewable line-by-line, executable end-to-end.
Transport
Real-time. By design.
Atto documents sync over MQTT with CRDT-based conflict resolution. Every section, every directive, every LaTeX block is an independent stream.
A signing event never blocks an edit in progress. A dropped connection resumes from its last acknowledged patch. The broker is horizontally scalable — the protocol is not.
Browser Editor
│
▼ MQTT / QUIC
Atto Relay Broker
│
▼
Document State Service ──── Patch Log
│
▼
Baldwinson Protocol LayerLifecycle
Draft, review, sign, freeze, execute — in one format.
Every stage is a typed transition, captured in the document and the patch log. There is no external state.
- Draft Authors compose and revise.
- Review Comments anchor to the AST.
- Sign Parties countersign in order.
- Freeze Content becomes immutable.
- Execute Protocol events fire on effect.
Comparison
Why teams switch.
| Dimension | Traditional | Atto |
|---|---|---|
| Document format | Proprietary binary / XML | Open hybrid syntax (Markdown + LaTeX + directives) |
| Collaboration | File sharing, tracked changes | Real-time CRDT sync over MQTT |
| Version control | Manual saves, no canonical diff | Deterministic serialization, git-compatible |
| Signatures | Styled text or external tool | Typed ::signature-block nodes, protocol-native |
| Math notation | Insert object / external | Native inline and display LaTeX |
| Lifecycle awareness | None | Draft → Review → Sign → Freeze → Execute |