Writes a dispute-preventing statement of work with explicit inclusions and exclusions, a 2-revision-round limit, acceptance criteria, a 50-percent-upfront or milestone payment schedule, and a change-order clause, from a full template with [FILL] fields. Use when a freelancer or consultant says "write my SOW", "the client keeps adding stuff and I have nothing in writing", "how do I define scope in the contract", "what should my payment terms be", "draft a statement of work for this project", or "client won't sign off on the deliverable". Do NOT use for the persuasive proposal that wins the work - use sales-proposal-writer instead; this skill contracts work already agreed in principle.
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name: statement-of-work-writer
description: Writes a dispute-preventing statement of work with explicit inclusions and exclusions, a 2-revision-round limit, acceptance criteria, a 50-percent-upfront or milestone payment schedule, and a change-order clause, from a full template with [FILL] fields. Use when a freelancer or consultant says "write my SOW", "the client keeps adding stuff and I have nothing in writing", "how do I define scope in the contract", "what should my payment terms be", "draft a statement of work for this project", or "client won't sign off on the deliverable". Do NOT use for the persuasive proposal that wins the work - use sales-proposal-writer instead; this skill contracts work already agreed in principle.
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# Statement of Work Writer
Almost every freelance dispute - unpaid invoices, endless revisions, "that was obviously included" - traces back to a scope document that only listed what IS included and stayed silent on everything else. A dispute-preventing SOW is defined as much by its exclusions as its inclusions, and it decides in advance how three predictable events get handled: the client asks for more, the client goes quiet, and the client won't say "done". This skill writes that document.
It pairs with scope-creep-defense, which enforces at delivery time what this SOW establishes at signing time. In the Freelancer / Consultant OS pack, the scope content comes from productized-service-designer. Worked example: Maya, a freelance brand designer moving from $75/hr hourly work to productized retainers, contracting her $4,900/month Brand System Retainer.
## Operating procedure
### Step 1: Collect the inputs
1. The agreed offer: deliverables, quantities, price (from productized-service-designer if productized; for Maya, the Tier 2 retainer at $4,900/month, up to 36 hours).
2. Client legal name, signer, and start date.
3. Project type: one-time project or ongoing retainer - this decides the payment schedule.
4. The 3-5 requests the client is most likely to make that are NOT included. If the freelancer cannot name them, derive them from the "outside the box" list in productized-service-designer. Label guesses as guesses and confirm with the freelancer.
### Step 2: Write inclusions AND exclusions
Inclusions follow the deliverable definition rules from productized-service-designer: named artifact, quantity, format, revision rounds, turnaround. Then write the exclusions list - the section most SOWs skip and the reason most disputes happen. Include, at minimum:
- The likely-adjacent services this freelancer does not provide (Maya: copywriting, naming, motion design, print production and vendor management).