StipulateHow it works
The engine ingests the governing contract and the account facts, then reports what is actually available — with the citation, so the finding can be checked rather than trusted.
What it reads for
Two kinds of leverage, and a third that looks like leverage
Contractual
Prevailing-party and fee-shifting clauses, collection-cost provisions, contractual interest and late-charge terms, and the venue and notice conditions that govern whether any of it can be invoked.
Statutory
Prompt-payment acts, mechanics lien rights, and payment-bond claims attach by operation of law and do not require a clause in the agreement at all. On the right facts they carry more weight than anything the parties negotiated.
Reciprocity statutes cut in both directions
Several states rewrite a one-way attorney-fee clause into a mutual one. Read correctly that is often a gain: a clause drafted to pay only the customer becomes available to the creditor, and in California the resulting award is mandatory rather than discretionary. Read carelessly it is a loss, because a creditor's own one-way clause becomes available to the debtor.
Which way it runs depends on who drafted the clause and in whose favor, so the engine records the direction and the exposure for each provision rather than treating every fee clause as an asset.
It also discounts the award rather than banking it. Under § 1717(b)(2) there is no prevailing party where an action is voluntarily dismissed or dismissed on settlement — and a negotiated payment is the ordinary successful outcome here. The fee is leverage in the demand; it is not expected recovery, and a model that booked it as recovery would overstate every California claim it touched.
What it reports
One finding per account, with the reasoning attached
For each account in an aging file the engine reports the following, and attaches its reasoning to every item so that a person can check it.