Cloning and Copying Playbooks

When a new playbook overlaps heavily with one you already have, building it from scratch wastes the work you already did. Start from an existing playbook instead. Clone copies one of your own playbooks as a starting point; Copy brings a Pactly default playbook (a curated starter Pactly ships to every company) into your company so you can edit it. Both create an independent draft you own, and changes you make afterward never affect the original.

Cloning copies a playbook your company already owns, including its positions, groups, suggested clauses, and notes. The copy opens as a new draft at version 1, so you can edit it freely and publish when ready.

A few things to know about the result:

• The clone is independent. It carries its own version history starting at version 1, and editing it never changes the source playbook.
• The new playbook’s name is the original’s name with ” copy” added. Rename it to something that describes when to use it before you publish.
• The clone starts as a draft, so only you can see and use it until you publish. For how draft, publish, and version history work, see Creating Your First Playbook.

Pactly ships a set of Pactly default playbooks: curated starters available to every company, covering common agreement types. You will see them in your Playbooks list under the Pactly Playbooks filter.

You cannot edit a Pactly default playbook in place. Pactly maintains and updates these centrally, so the controls you get on them are different from your own playbooks. To customize one, copy it into your company first.

On any Pactly default playbook, the Copy to your company for customization action makes an editable copy your company owns. The copy keeps the original’s name (without a ” copy” suffix), records that it came from a default playbook, and becomes a standard company playbook you can version and publish like any other.

Once copied, the playbook behaves exactly like one you built yourself: it lives under Your Playbooks, you edit it through new versions, and your edits never affect the original Pactly default.

If a Pactly default playbook isn’t relevant to your team, you can hide it so it stops appearing in your list and in playbook selection during a review. Use the Hide this playbook action on the playbook row, then confirm in the Hide Default Playbook dialog.

Hiding is per-company and reversible, and it never deletes anything. To bring a hidden default playbook back, go to Settings → AI Automation → Default Playbooks and re-enable it.

Copying a default playbook does not hide the original. After copying, you may want to hide the default so it’s clear which version applies.

Cloning is the fastest path when most of the content carries over. Build a fresh playbook only when the overlap is small enough that editing a copy would take longer than starting clean.

• Playbooks overview
• Generate a Playbook with AI
• Import a Playbook from a Document
• Running a Playbook Review in Word