Ask any AI vendor about their contracting tools, and you'll hear a lot about automation, speed, and generative capabilities. What you'll hear far less about is context — and yet, context is the single factor that determines whether AI agents actually work in the real world of enterprise contracting. In this installment of The Intelligence Brief, our video series exploring the ideas shaping AI-native contracting, Icertis Senior VP of Product Management Sundar Balasubramanian explains why context is so critical, and how Icertis approaches it.

Context isn't one thing — it's three

In the video above, we break down context into three distinct components, each capturing a different dimension of how an enterprise actually operates:

Governance. This is the foundational layer — the system of record that establishes the rules, structure, and oversight governing how contracts are created, managed, and enforced across their lifecycle.

Decisions. Every negotiation leaves a trail: the positions a business or its counterparties took, where they conceded a provision, and where they held firm. Those historical decisions aren't just archival — they directly inform the next negotiation and the next set of decisions.

Patterns. Beyond explicit decisions, enterprises have implicit behaviors — recurring tendencies and norms that show up across contracts over time. Recognizing these patterns is what allows an AI system to understand not just what a business has said, but how it actually behaves.

Why all three matter together

The video makes a pointed claim: to build agents capable of operating across the entire contract lifecycle — not just a single task or moment — an AI system needs all three components simultaneously. Governance without decision history is rigid. Decision history without pattern recognition misses the bigger behavioral picture. And none of it matters without the system of record to ground it in reality.

This is where the framing gets practical rather than theoretical. Icertis's own portfolio maps directly onto these three pillars: Engage captures decisions, Analyze captures patterns, and Operate — the underlying system of record — captures governance. Because the platform captures all three parts of context in one place, it's positioned as a uniquely complete foundation for contract intelligence, rather than a patchwork of point solutions each addressing only a slice of the problem.

The bottom line

As AI agents take on more autonomous roles across the contract lifecycle — drafting, negotiating, monitoring obligations — the quality of their output will only ever be as good as the context they're given. Governance, decisions, and patterns aren't nice-to-have enrichments; they're prerequisites. Without all three, agents risk being confidently wrong. With all three, they can be genuinely reliable partners in the contracting process.

Watch the full video above, and stay tuned for the next installment of The Intelligence Brief, where we'll continue unpacking the ideas shaping AI-native contract intelligence.