ZAMBO.

Direct answer

The work is done, delivered, and accepted. Now a signature is requested over all of it. Read what it reaches before it covers what already happened.

A non-disclosure agreement before a project is ordinary: the client is about to show you their plans, and they want a promise first. The same document arriving after delivery is a different animal. It does not protect a conversation you are about to have. It reaches backwards over work that is finished, material you have already seen and used, a portfolio the delivery terms may already allow, and sometimes your own methods, which were yours before this client existed. None of that makes the request hostile; large companies often send the document late because their process, not their intent, is slow. It does mean the signing decision is a review, not a reflex. This page gives you the five reaches to check, the record to answer from, and a narrowed signing that protects the client's information honestly without quietly re-trading a finished job.

See the instrument first: the live demo runs one real call and hands you its verifiable receipt, no signup.

Updated November 10, 2026. First published November 10, 2026. The records quoted below are real and public, read back from the live service on November 10, 2026.

Step 1. Do not sign on arrival, and do not treat the delay as pressure

Nothing about a finished job is urgent in the way this request will feel. The work is delivered, the information is already shared, and a week spent reading changes nothing the client needs, while a signature given unread changes a great deal for you. Say that plainly and warmly: thanks for sending it, I will review it against the project and come back by a named day. Then check one thing before the document itself: what already governs this job. If you signed terms or a confidentiality clause at the start, or your own accepted proposal carried one, there may already be a promise in force, and the new document either duplicates it, contradicts it, or quietly replaces it with wider terms. Two documents trying to govern the same work is a problem in itself. The goal is one governing text both sides can point at, and this review is where you make sure of it.

Step 2. Read for the five reaches

Read the document as five separate grabs, and mark each one. What counts as confidential: their materials and plans, or everything you learned, saw, or discussed, a definition wide enough to cover your own trade. The start date: does it claim the whole project period from before you began, sweeping in how the work was presented and discussed at the time. Showing the work: does it ban naming the client or displaying the delivered work, overriding the portfolio understanding the job was delivered under. Extra promises in confidentiality clothing: restrictions on working for others, ownership of your tools, methods, or anything you develop later, penalties written as fixed sums. And duration: a stated number of years, or silence, which in practice means forever. A fair document survives this read with narrow answers: their information, from a stated date, for a stated period, saying nothing about your methods or about work already shown as agreed.

Step 3. Answer from the delivery record, not from memory

The negotiation goes better when both sides are looking at the same inventory: what was actually delivered, what of theirs you actually received, and what state the job closed in. The record format is AER-1, published as an IETF Internet-Draft (draft-zambo-aer1-26), and each step carries a verifiable receipt: a receipt proves the saved result was not changed since it was saved. The two public records below show what that inventory's decision layer looks like on a real job:

Accepted: the decision is on the record

Pending: checked, and still waiting on a decision

The accepted record shows a job closed with its decision recorded: steps listed, 4 of 4 checked, decided by the client on a stated date, release ok_to_release. The pending record shows a job still open, 5 steps checked and no decision yet, which matters here too: an agreement signed mid job and one signed after acceptance govern different realities. Your reply can name the actual exchange with that precision: the materials the client sent you, listed; the deliverables now in their hands, listed; the date the job closed. A confidentiality promise tied to a list is a promise you can keep and they can enforce. A promise tied to everything is neither, which is a point sophisticated clients understand when it is put to them with the inventory attached.

Step 4. Sign the narrowed version, and say exactly what changed

The professional answer is rarely refusal; it is a signature on a version whose scope matches the exchange. Confidential means the information the client provided that was marked confidential or sent as confidential during the project, not your pre-existing skills, tools, methods, or anything already public. The term runs a stated number of years from signing. Showing the delivered work stays as it stood under the delivery terms; if the client now wants the work kept out of your portfolio entirely, that is a new and valuable ask, priced and agreed as its own change, not folded silently into a confidentiality signature. Send the narrowed text back with the changes visible and one sentence per change. If the client's process cannot accept edits, the fallback is a short side letter, signed by both, recording the same limits against the standard form. Either way, get the countersigned copy back and file it with the job record before you treat the matter as closed.

Step 5. If payment is being held until you sign, separate the two files

Sometimes the late agreement is not process slowness; the final invoice sits unpaid and the signature is the toll. Name the separation kindly and in writing: the invoice is due against work delivered and accepted, on the record as it stands, and the agreement is a new request that you are reviewing in parallel and will answer by your named day. Do not let a finished, accepted job be re-traded as the price of a new promise; each concession extracted at the payment gate teaches the gate to stay shut longer next time. If the narrowed version comes back refused and the payment stays held, you are no longer in a signing question at all, you are in a non-payment question with a document as its stated reason, and it should be worked as one, from the delivery record outward.

What this page cannot settle

This page is general information, not legal advice, and it cannot tell you whether a specific document is enforceable where you are, what an unusual clause would do in a dispute, or whether you already owe confidentiality duties under an earlier signed text; an agreement with real money or real restrictions behind it deserves a lawyer's read before your signature, not after. A verifiable receipt proves the saved result was not changed since it was saved; it does not decide what counts as confidential, and no record settles what you may lawfully say. What the delivery record does settle is the factual floor of the negotiation: what was delivered, what was received, and when the job closed.

Frequently asked questions

My client asked me to sign a non-disclosure agreement after the work was already finished. Should I sign it?

Not on arrival, and not in the shape it usually arrives in. Because the work is finished, the document reaches backwards: it can redefine everything you saw during the project as confidential, override the understanding the work was delivered under about showing it, and in wide drafts reach your own pre-existing methods and future work for others. Read it for those five reaches: the definition, the start date, the effect on showing the work, any extra promises hiding inside, and the duration. Check what you already signed at the start, so one text governs, not two. Then sign the narrowed version: their provided information, from a stated date, for a stated term, with the delivered work's status as agreed at delivery left intact, and file the countersigned copy with the job record. A fair client accepts that quickly, because it protects everything they actually need.

Is it normal for a client to send a confidentiality agreement after the project?

Common, yes, especially with larger companies, where the document is generated by a procurement or legal process that runs behind the work rather than ahead of it. Common is not the same as harmless to sign unread. The late arrival changes what the signature does: before a project, the agreement guards information you have not seen yet, and you can still price or decline the job with its terms in view. After delivery, the same words bind work already done, conversations already had, and a portfolio already published under the delivery terms. Treat the request as routine paperwork that deserves a real read precisely because it is routine; the documents that cause trouble are almost never the exotic ones, they are the standard forms signed in a hurry at the end.

Can a late agreement stop me showing the work in my portfolio?

A signed one can, if its words cover displaying the work or naming the client, and it overrides whatever understanding the job was delivered under; that is exactly why the showing question is one of the five reaches to mark before signing. If the delivery terms allowed you to show the work, a later document that removes that right is taking something you already hold, and it should be surfaced and agreed as its own change, with its own consideration, not absorbed into a confidentiality signature as though nothing changed. If nothing was ever agreed about showing the work, the negotiation is genuinely open, and the narrowed position most freelancers land on is: confidential information stays confidential, and the fact and appearance of the delivered work can be shown as agreed now, in writing, either way.

What if I already signed something about confidentiality when the project started?

Then the first task is comparison, not signature. Lay the two texts side by side and find where they differ: definition, start date, duration, and anything the new one adds about showing work, other clients, or your methods. If the new document says it replaces all earlier agreements, signing it retires the narrower text you were comfortable with and installs the wider one over the whole project, which is sometimes the entire point of sending it. The clean outcome is one governing text: either a written confirmation that the original clause stands and no second document is needed, or a replacement both sides have actually read against the original. Never leave a job governed by two overlapping promises and a hope that the kinder one wins.

How does a delivery record help in a signing negotiation like this?

It gives both sides the same inventory to negotiate over: the steps and deliverables as saved, the dates they landed, and the decision state the job closed in, instead of two memories of a project. When the work runs through Zambo, every step lands on the job record with a verifiable receipt under AER-1, published as IETF Internet-Draft draft-zambo-aer1-26, the client accepts on that record, and the acceptance view shows status, decider, date, and release state. New users get 20 calls and 1 wrap-up free every day per agent, and picking up work in another AI is always free. For $0.99, run your next client job on one record from first step to acceptance, so any document that arrives late, confidentiality or otherwise, is reviewed against a dated record of the actual exchange: get the Day Pass. A Day Pass is unlimited for 24 hours, no subscription. Ongoing use is the Zambo Pass at $29 a month, $19 a month for $ZAMBO holders, or Lifetime at $250 one time.

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