Rashi understands that witnesses are allowed to writes notes for themselves and use it to remind themselves of the events, so long as they will actually recall the events after reading their notes. But they cannot just testify word for word from the note, without any recollection of the event, since that is a violation of "m'pi kesavam". Tosafos qualifies this by saying that if the witnesses are testifying as if they recall the events but are actually only telling what they saw in a document, there is a problem of "m'pi kesavam" (seemingly the concern is that beis din will not be able to cross examine them, if they don't realize they are simply testifying about what they saw in a document). But, if they would testify explicitly that they saw a signed contract, that is literally equivalent to testifying that they were present in a courtroom and heard a p'sak din, which they are certainly able to say. However, Tosafos questions whether a witness can come to court and testify explicitly that his source is from a personal note - since it does not have halachic status of a contract, it would be a violation of "m'pi kesavam" even if they are honest about their source. The R"I disagrees and maintains that it has full status of a contract, and so long as he explicitly mentions that his testimony is coming directly from a personal note, it would be valid.
There is an entirely different argument between Rashi (in chumash) and Tosafos if a witness is able to send his personal note to beis din to be used as eidus. Rashi considers this a problem of "m'pi kesavam", Tosafos says that this is acceptable eidus (but if a contract without 2 witnesses would not have status of a contract, it would only be admissible if the witness who wrote it recalls the eidus so the presentation of the contract in beis din would be tantamount to actually testifying in the beis din).
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