It applies whether you're hiring a freelancer, signing up with a company or building with an AI tool yourself. The wording of a contract is a job for a lawyer, and this post isn't legal advice. This is what to bring to that conversation.
The code
Paying someone to write software doesn't automatically make the code yours. In the US, an outside developer generally keeps the copyright unless a signed agreement transfers it to you.
With a platform, you may be paying to use software they keep. That can be a fair deal, as long as you know that's the deal. And if an AI tool wrote the code, read the tool's terms, but know their limit. US copyright needs a human author, and the Copyright Office says instructions typed into an AI tool aren't enough by themselves, so purely AI-written code may have no copyright to own. How much human work is enough is still being worked out, so ask a lawyer if the app is central to your business.
Settled when you can point to the sentence that says who owns it, and you know where a current copy lives.
The data
Your customers, orders, messages and uploads should be yours, and the agreement should say so. Owning data doesn't help much if you can't get it out, though. You want an export in a common format that another system could read, including the files. It's also fair to ask who else can use your data, and for what.
Settled when you've downloaded a full export yourself and opened it.
The accounts
Hosting, database, email sending, the payment provider, app store listings. Whoever builds the app often sets these up in their own name, on their own card, because it's quicker. That's how an owner ends up locked out of their own business when a freelancer stops answering.
Put each one in your business's name, and invite the builder in. The payment account matters most, since that's where your money goes. If a platform runs all of this for you, ask what you'd get in its place if you left.
Settled when you have a list of each account and whose name it's in, and you've logged in to the ones that are yours.
The domain
Your web address is the one thing your customers already know, and it's the hardest to replace. Register it in your business's name, in an account you can log in to. Send renewal notices to an address you'll still be reading in five years, and turn on automatic renewal.
Settled when you've logged in and seen your business's name on it.
Leaving
This is the awkward one to raise, and the most useful. Agree how much notice either side gives, what gets handed over and in what form, how long help is available and what it costs, and when your data gets deleted after you go.
A good partner won't mind. Someone confident you'll stay has no reason to make leaving hard, and an awkward answer is worth hearing now.
Settled when you could describe what leaving next month would look like, and the other side would agree with you.
Put all five on one page, and have a lawyer turn it into something you both sign. The best day for this talk is the day everyone's still excited.
