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For AI agents: a documentation index is available at https://docs.coverbase.com/llms.txt. This page is also available in markdown by appending .md to the URL.
This page is part of the User Guides collection and goes with the Contract Guardian guide, which covers clause sets end to end. Read this one when your standards already live in a spreadsheet.
Most legal teams already have their clause playbook written down somewhere: a Word annex, a negotiation matrix, a tab in someone’s workbook. Rather than retyping it clause by clause, put it in the Coverbase template and upload it. One file can carry several clause sets, each with its full multi-tier variant language.
This is an alternative to the three routes in the main guide: copy the packaged library, generate from your own paper, or build by hand. Use whichever gets your standards in fastest. You can mix them, and edit everything afterwards. If your standard is a contract rather than a spreadsheet, baseline extraction is the faster start.

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Get the template

On Configuration → Clause Sets, open the Add Clause Set menu and choose Download Import Template. You get an .xlsx workbook with three sheets: The template ships with two filled-in example rows. Delete them before you upload, or edit them in place; they exist to show the shape. One workbook can carry up to 1000 clause rows and must be 20MB or smaller. Over either limit the upload is refused whole rather than partly imported, so you never have to work out which rows made it.
Keep the header row on the Clauses sheet intact. Columns are matched by header name, not position, so you can reorder or add columns freely, but a renamed or deleted required header fails the upload.

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Fill it in

Each row is one clause. Rows that share a Clause Set value are grouped into a single clause set.

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Required columns

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required
The name of the clause set this clause belongs to. Repeat the same value on every row in the set. A file with FN Master Agreement on thirteen rows and FN Privacy Commitment on fifteen produces two clause sets.
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required
Your stable reference for the clause, like MSA-001 or PC-010. Must be unique within its clause set. This is what reviewers quote in tickets and email, so pick a scheme you can live with.
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required
What reviewers see. Use the heading a lawyer would recognize: “Limitation of liability”, not “LoL cap v2”.
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required
One of Critical, High, Medium, or Low. Drives triage order and grouping; it does not change the verdict. Reserve Critical for clauses that would block a signature.
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required
Every clause needs at least one variant. See Variants below.

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Optional columns

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Shown on the clause set. Repeat it on every row in the set. It is applied only when the import creates the set. Importing into a clause set that already exists never overwrites its description.
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text
Written for the AI. This is what tells the matcher how to find and evaluate the clause, and it is the field that most affects your results. The Contract Guardian guide shows the four-section format that works: aliases, typical contract types, extraction signals, common deviations.
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Written for humans. Why the clause matters, and the context a reviewer needs when they hit a deviation.
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Which parts of a contract this clause should be found in, separated by |. For example: Master Service Agreement|Order Form|Statement of Work. Leave blank to apply everywhere. Use the values from the Reference Values sheet.
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Groups related clauses in the clause set view. Leave it out and Coverbase derives one from the clause name (Fee increase cap becomes fee_increase_cap), which is exactly what happens when you create a clause in the UI without one. Add the column when you want your own taxonomy: limitation_of_liability, indemnification, audit_rights.

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Variants

Variants define the tiers of language you are willing to accept, from most protective to minimally acceptable. During review, the vendor’s actual language is scored against them. The template ships with three variant slots. Each is a group of three columns: Rules:
  • Variant 1 is required. Variants 2 and 3 are optional; leave all three cells of an unused variant blank.
  • Each variant on a clause needs a distinct risk tier. Two variants both marked 1 - Preferred fails that row.
  • You can add more slots. Add Variant 4 Risk Tier, Variant 4 Label, and Variant 4 Clause Text columns and they will be imported. Tiers run from 1 to 5.
  • Tiers do not have to be contiguous. A clause with a Tier 1 and a Tier 3 and nothing in between is normal.
A single Tier 1 variant is a floor, not a playbook: it marks anything that is not your exact preferred language as needing review. If your file has one variant per clause, expect a noisy first review. Add the language you would accept in negotiation before you run the set against a live contract.

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Upload it

On Configuration → Clause Sets, open the Add Clause Set menu, choose Import from Spreadsheet, and drop the file in. Files must be .xlsx or .xlsm. Coverbase reads the Clauses sheet only. The Instructions and Reference Values sheets are ignored, so you can annotate them freely.

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What happens to each row

The result panel reports every row by its spreadsheet row number, in one of three states.
The clause was added, with all of its variants. New clauses land at the end of their clause set, in file order.
A clause with that Identifier is already in the target clause set, so the row was skipped and nothing about the existing clause changed.An accidental re-upload of a stale file cannot overwrite language your team negotiated. It also means the spreadsheet is not an editing tool: to change a clause that is already in Coverbase, edit it in the clause detail view, where the change is versioned and the old wording is kept.
Something in the row could not be read: an unrecognized severity, a component type that is not in the reference list, a clause with no variants, two variants sharing a tier, or a missing required value.Rows are independent. One bad row is reported and skipped; every other row still imports. Fix the reported rows and upload the file again. The rows that already imported come back as “already existed”, so re-uploading the whole corrected file is the normal fix, not a problem.
If every row fails, nothing is saved at all, including any clause set the file would have created. You are not left with an empty set to clean up.

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New sets versus existing sets

Coverbase matches the Clause Set column against the names of your active clause sets, ignoring case.
  • No match: the clause set is created, and its description comes from the Clause Set Description column.
  • A match: the clauses are appended to that existing set, keeping its current name and description. New clauses go after the ones already there.
  • Archived sets are not matched. To replace a clause set wholesale, archive the old one and import the file: you get a clean new set, and reviews that ran against the old one stay readable.
Because matching is by name, renaming a clause set in Coverbase and then re-uploading the original file creates a second set rather than adding to the renamed one. Update the Clause Set column in your file when you rename.

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After the import

Imported clause sets are created active, so they are immediately available to run. Before you point one at a live contract:
1

Spot-check the variants

Open two or three clauses and confirm the tier language came across whole. Long clause text is the most common casualty of copy-paste between documents.
2

Fill in the guidance

Clauses imported without a Guidance value still match, but they match on the name alone. Adding aliases and extraction signals is what turns a decent match rate into a good one.
3

Run it against a contract you already know

Pick an agreement whose answers you can predict, run a review, and compare. Tune the tiers before you roll the set out.

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Export a clause set

The same workbook works in both directions. On Configuration → Clause Sets, select a set, open the ⋯ menu on the right of its header, and choose Export to Spreadsheet. You get an .xlsx file named after the set (fn-master-agreement.xlsx) with the same three sheets a template download has, and one row per clause. The exported file is a valid import file, which lets you:
1

Branch a playbook

Export a set, change the Clause Set column to a new name, and import it. You get a second set with the same clauses: a regional variant, a stricter tier for a critical vendor, a draft you can edit without touching the live set.
2

Review it away from the app

Send the workbook to counsel who do not have a Coverbase login. Every tier of language is in the file, in the columns they already know how to read.
3

Keep a copy

A point-in-time snapshot of what your standard said, in a format that does not depend on Coverbase.
Export is not an edit-and-put-back loop. Re-importing an exported file into the same clause set does nothing: every Identifier already exists, so every row comes back as “already existed”. That is the same rule that protects against a stale re-upload. To change a clause that is already in Coverbase, edit it in the clause detail view, where the change is versioned.
Two things about the file’s contents:
  • Only current, non-archived clauses are included. Archived clauses and superseded versions are left out, because importing them back would recreate them as new clauses.
  • Variant columns are sized to the set. A set whose widest clause has five tiers exports five variant slots; a set where every clause has one tier exports one. Clauses with fewer tiers leave the extra slots blank.
Clause text longer than 32,000 characters is truncated in the export, marked with ... [truncated], because Excel refuses to open a file with a larger cell. Nothing in Coverbase is changed, but do not re-import a file that shows that marker without restoring the full text first.

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Troubleshooting

Contract Guardian guide

Clause sets end to end: the reference clause anatomy, writing risk-tier variants, and running a review.

Generate a clause set from your own contract

The other upload path: extract a clause set from your template MSA or DPA.

The clause set library

The 12 packaged clause standards you can copy and then export to branch.